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The Training of Teachers 

and 
Methods of Instruction 



ilontion: C. J. CLAY and SONS, 

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 

AVE MARIA LANE. 

ffilaggoin: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. 





VIM 
VH 


m 



Enpjtg: F. A. BROCKHAUS. 
iP-tta gork: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



[All Rights reserved'] 



The Training of Teachers 

and 

Methods of Instruction 

Selected Papers 



Sf S: Laurie, a.m., ll.d. 

Professor of the Institutes and 
History of Education, University of Edinburgh. 

Author of "Primary Instruction in Relation to Education," 
"John Amos Comenius," "Institutes of Education," etc., etc. 



Cambridge : 

at the University Press. 

1901 



v 9 v * 



ffiambrtlige : 



PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



1 i 1 yy 



i 



p( 



INSCRIBED 



TO 



L. S. 



Stresa, 
May, 1 90 1. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

T^vURING the last twenty years I have published 
three small volumes of Essays and Addresses on 
Educational topics. These having been for some time 
out of print 1 , I hope I am not wrong in thinking that 
a selection of those papers which seem to me to treat 
of subjects of permanent interest may be acceptable 
to some. Two papers, one on Universities and the 
other on History in the school, have not before been 
published in book-form. 



S. S. L. 



University of Edinburgh, 
i 901. 



1 With the exception of one volume which has ceased to command 
a sale. 



CONTENTS. 

1. The Teaching Profession and Chairs of Education 

Inaugural Address ...... 

2. On Professorships and Lectureships on Education 

3. The Philosophy of Mind ;and the Training of Teachers 

4. The Schoolmaster and University (Day) Training 

Colleges in England 

5. The respective functions in Education of Primary 

Secondary and University Schools 

6. The general function of the Primary School 

7. Liberal Education in the Primary School 

8. Organization of the Curriculum of Secondary Schools 

9. The University and the People : — and the University of 

the Future 

10. Geography in the School 

11. The Religious Education of the Young 

12. Examinations, Emulation, and Competition . 

13. History and Citizenship in the School . 

14. Authority in relation to Discipline, etc. 



1 

42 
5| 

79 

99 
114 

137 

'54 

176 
200 
219 

237 
254 
274 



I. 



THE TEACHING PROFESSION AND CHAIRS 
OF EDUCATION. 

INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
{Bell Chair of the Theory, History, and Art of Education 1 .) 

The first occupant of a Chair new to the Universities of Great 
Britain is placed in a somewhat peculiar position. It may be 
fairly expected of him not merely to correlate the new subject 
with the other studies of a University, but to vindicate for it 
a right to the promotion which it has obtained, to explain 
its bearing on the educational interests of the country at large, 
and to satisfy the sceptical as to its direct utility. Were I, 
however, to undertake to maintain a thesis so large, I should 
weary even the well-disposed listener, and probably fail, after 
all, to convince or convert the unfriendly. A broad treatment 
of the subject would involve me in a range of argument, fact, 
and illustration, so wide and varied, that I think it better 
to assume very much on the general question. I am entitled 
indeed to make large assumptions, if the educational movement 
of the last thirty-five years has had any genuineness and honesty 
in it ; if education has been anything more than a pretext for 

1 Inaugural Address, 1876. 
L. L. I 



2 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

political and ecclesiastical contention. It is not improbable, 
moreover, that by limiting my range of observation, and 
confining myself to the objections taken to the foundation 
of this particular Chair, while at the same time giving some 
indication of my own point of view with respect to the question 
of education, I may do more than could be accomplished by 
a general treatment, to reconcile the hostile and the sceptical 
to this new event in educational history. But, first, a few 
words as to the foundation. 

Dr Andrew Bell was born in St Andrews, in 1 753- 
At the ancient University of that town he was distinguished 
in most subjects of study, but especially in Mathematics and 
Natural Philosophy. After spending some years as a tutor 
in the Southern States of America, he returned to this country, 
took orders in the Church of England, and sailed for Madras. 
There, he was appointed to an army chaplaincy, and under- 
took, along with his other duties, the superintendence of the 
Military Male Orphan Asylum, which was instituted after his 
arrival in the Presidency. It was while devoting himself with 
singular earnestness and assiduity to the work of education in 
this hospital that he was driven, almost by the necessity of his 
position, to invent the system of mutual tuition with which 
his name will be ever associated. After Dr Bell's return to 
this country he devoted himself to the dissemination of his 
system, being sustained in his unceasing activity not a little 
by the rivalry of Joseph Lancaster. Out of the labours of the 
latter grew the British and Foreign School Society, and out of 
the labours of the former the National Society in connection 
with the Church of England. 

The principle of mutual instruction of boys by boys was 
the discovery by which Dr Bell hoped to regenerate the world. 
But in truth the invention and application of this method was 
not his sole merit. He was a genuine teacher, having quick 
sympathy with the nature of. boys, and great readiness of 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 3 

resource in the schoolroom. Many of our established practices 
were first introduced by him, and some of his improvements 
are only now being adopted. My impression is that prior to 
his undertaking the charge of the Madras Orphan Asylum in 
1789 it was not usual strictly to classify the pupils of a primary 
school ; and we are all aware that it was only the other day that 
the leading schools of Scotland began to arrange their pupils in 
classes according to their progress, and that in some schools 
of high reputation (incredible as it may seem) classification on 
this basis has not even yet been attempted ! I shall not on this 
occasion enter further into Dr Bell's educational reforms, but 
content myself with saying that at present, and until better 
informed, I am disposed to regard him as the founder of the 
Art of Primary Education in this country, as a conscious art 1 . 

Dr Bell destined his large fortune mainly for the foundation 
of specific Educational Institutions, the residue to be applied 
to educational purposes, according to the discretion of his 
Trustees, enjoining on them always to have due regard to 
the promotion of his system. The interest of this money was 
for many years paid away in small grants to various schools 
throughout the country in connection with the Church of 
Scotland ; but after the passing of the Education (Scotland) 
Act, in 1872, which made universal provision for schools, the 
Trustees, who at present are the Earl of Leven and Melville, 
Lord Kirkcaldie, and Mr John Cook, W.S., resolved to employ 
a portion of the funds in their keeping for the purpose of 
instituting Chairs of Education in Edinburgh and St Andrews, 
to be called the " Bell Chairs of the Theory, History, and 
Art of Education," imposing on the occupants the duty of 
expounding, in the course of their prelections, Bell's principles 
and system. They thereby fulfilled in the most effectual way, 
under existing circumstances, the objects which Dr Bell had 

1 Anyone who doubts this will have his doubts removed by reading 
Southey's Life of Bell, and above all BelPs Collected Works in one vol., 
published by Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, in 1832 — now a very rare book. 



4 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

in view in originally constituting the trust. Certainly no one 
who has read the Life of Dr Bell, by Southey, will doubt 
that this resolution of the Trustees would have been in the 
highest degree pleasing to him. Almost with one voice the 
teaching profession have hailed the action of the Trustees as 
a great educational advance. It has been felt that the three 
gentlemen above named have conferred honour on a depart- 
ment of work which Dr Bell delighted to honour. They 
have unquestionably done very much to promote education 
in Scotland, not only by raising the work of the schoolmaster 
in public estimation, but also by attracting public attention to 
education as being not merely a question of national machinery 
for the planting of schools but a question of principles and 
methods — in brief, of the philosophy of man and of political 
constitutions. 

I can do no more on this occasion than make a merely 
passing allusion to the zealous, but futile, efforts of the late 
Professor Pillans to do what the Bell Trustees have now 
accomplished. 

A Chair of the Theory, History, and Art of Education 
having been instituted, we have now to ask what the objects 
of such a Chair are. There has been much misunderstanding 
with regard to these. Some are at a loss to know what there 
is to say on education within the walls of a University, and 
what the principles and history of that subject have to do 
with the schoolmaster's work. Others, who have not to be 
instructed on these points, dread the competition of an Educa- 
tion Chair with the existing Training Colleges. The latter 
class of objectors is the more important. They are at least 
aware that the necessity of training teachers in methods and 
in school organization is not a question to be now for the 
first time debated. They know that the question has been 
settled these thirty years by the combined intelligence of the 
Government of the country and of the Education Committees 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 5 

of the various Churches. The former class of objectors has 
nothing to urge against the University training of teachers in 
the philosophy and methods of education, which they would 
not have been prepared with equal readiness and confidence 
to urge against the institution of the existing Training Colleges 
thirty years ago. Indeed, I am disposed to think that, had the 
desirableness of training teachers to their professional work 
been propounded thirty years ago for discussion on its own 
merits as a general question, it would not yet be settled in 
the affirmative. The Parliamentary Philistine, the " Church in 
danger " men, and above all (strange to say) a large proportion 
of those engaged in the work of teaching, would have been 
opposed to the introduction of any such novel idea in practical 
form. Many as are the evils of centralization, it is unquestion- 
ably to the centralizing action of the Committee of Privy 
Council that we owe the full recognition of the efforts which 
were being made thirty-five or forty years ago in London and 
Edinburgh to train teachers, and the consequent growth of the 
Training College system. The work was done through the 
Churches, and accordingly called forth no Church opposition, 
and as money was freely offered to all who desired training, the 
rest of the world readily acquiesced. 

The effect of this action on the part of the Privy Council 
has been most beneficial. Almost all now recognize that there 
is an art of teaching and of school-keeping, and that primary 
teachers should be trained in that art. It is only among that 
class of teachers and professors who have never come into 
close contact with the existing system of training that doubts 
and objections survive. Quietly, and almost unnoticed, a great 
new Institution has established itself in the United Kingdom, 
and has overpowered every possible theoretical objection to its 
existence by the practical benefits it has conferred on the 
country. It is therefore too late now to discuss the general 
question. The practical result is before us, and the occupation 
of teacher has been finally raised into a profession by requiring, 



6 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

as the condition of entering it, a professional discipline. If 
method in the work of the primary school is now regarded 
as indispensable, may we not conclude that Plato, Quintilian, 
and Ascham have something to say to the teacher of the 
secondary school which may be worthy of his attention ? 

Notwithstanding many defects — and defects are incident to 
all organizations— the Training College system has been a 
success. The kind of work done in these institutions, and 
the extent to which they have taken their place as seminaries 
second only to the Universities themselves, would, if inquired 
into, astonish the few who have hitherto ignored their existence. 
I am also satisfied that the improvements which have taken 
place even in secondary instruction have been due largely, if 
not chiefly, to the indirect influence of the Training Colleges, 
although these exist for the training of primary teachers alone. 
Every man connected with education must be so well informed 
on this the most important modern movement in educational 
history that to dwell longer on it would be superfluous. My 
purpose in referring to it at all is to limit the range of any 
argument which might naturally be expected from me on this 
occasion. 

For. the necessity of training the future teacher not only 
in the subjects which he is afterwards to teach, but in the 
art which he is to profess, being once for all a settled matter, 
-I am at liberty to confine my remarks to the narrower question 
of the training of those aspirants to the scholastic profession 
who pass through the Universities. Those aspirants are either 
self-supporting or partly dependent on small bursaries gained 
in open competition, and their purpose is to prepare themselves 
for the higher class of Public Schools (which, in their upper 
departments, are in truth lower secondary schools), and for 
purely Secondary or Grammar Schools either in Scotland or 
other parts of the Empire. As it is at once evident that 
attending university classes instead of the classes of a Training 
College has no such great virtue in it as to enable university 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 7 

men to dispense with professional training any more than their 
fellow-teachers (of a so-called lower grade), it is superfluous 
to argue the point. It may be at once assumed that, as the 
schools for which they are preparing themselves, at least those 
in Scotland and the Colonies, comprehend within them at once 
primary and secondary instruction, the need of professional 
training, in the case of university students, is peculiarly great. 
Where are they to get this? They might be required to 
combine attendance at a Training College with attendance 
at a University for a degree ; but this, though it might serve 
as a provisional arrangement, would not secure the end we 
seek. And it would not secure it because a specialist Training 
College does not answer the same purposes as a University. 
The broader culture, the freer air, the higher aims of the 
latter, give to it an educational influence which specialist 
Colleges can never exercise. 

It is impossible within my present limits to elaborate this 
view of the question : it is familiar to all educated men. It 
would appear however that the moment we substitute a distinct 
practical purpose, such as the production of engineers, officers 
of the army, physicians, ministers of the Church, as the sole aim 
of education, and arrange the whole machinery of an institution 
to attain any one of these ends exclusively, the mental life of 
the student becomes at once narrowed, and education in the 
higher sense disappears altogether. We all acknowledge this 
truth when it is supported by our antipathies and we are called 
upon for an opinion on such seminaries as Jesuit Colleges. 
But the objections to be taken to these specialist seminaries 
are, from an educational point of view, substantially the same 
in kind as may be taken to Colleges which have other, and 
merely secular, aims. It is desirable, therefore, to maintain 
the position of the Universities as the legitimate trainers of 
all those aspirants to the teaching profession who are fitted 
by their previous education to enter on a university curriculum. 
This is all that is demanded by those who desire a university 



8 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

training for schoolmasters. Is it an unreasonable demand? 
The preliminary training of all female student-teachers, and 
of the great majority of the other sex, makes, and will continue 
in perpetuity to make, Training Colleges a necessity ; but there 
are some youths whose greater local advantages or greater 
native energy of mind is such as to have secured for them 
a better early training in languages and mathematics and to 
have inspired them with a higher ambition than these semi- 
naries can satisfy. Those better trained intellects, those more 
ambitious natures, ought to have the University open to them 
not only, as at present, for instruction but for professional 
training. 

It may be urged, — it is urged by some, — that the students 
of Training Colleges are welcome to the discipline which the 
University can give in classics, science, and philosophy, but 
that the Training Colleges themselves should furnish the purely 
professional instruction. But the answer to this is, that if the 
Training Colleges are competent to handle the question of 
education as a science and art equally well with the Universities, 
they are also competent to teach classics, science, and philo- 
sophy equally well with the Universities. Latin, I fancy, can 
be taught quite as well in one street of a town as another. 
What we want is that the student-teacher shall live in the 
university atmosphere, and enjoy all those subtle intellectual 
and moral advantages which belong to that serener air. If 
this be desirable as regards Latin, Literature and Mathematics, 
how much more is it desirable in the case of the principles 
of education ! Here the student enters into the precincts of 
Philosophy itself: he has to find the psychological basis and 
relations of methods of instruction, he has to think about 
Education, and try to ascertain what Education precisely is, 
and what kind of public duty it is which he has before him 
as a schoolmaster. He has to investigate the principles of 
his art, and to expand his thought by studying its history. 
Is it not at once apparent that whatever advantage belongs 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 9 

to the study of classics and science in a University belongs 
pre-eminently to studies which ally themselves to philosophy 
and history ? Doubtless there are some minds whose education 
is so defective and whose imagination is so weak that they are 
unable to conceive in what respect a university curriculum 
should differ from a similar curriculum in a specialist College 
in which a practical limitation of aim vitiates the whole process 
of education in the higher sense of that term and makes it 
essentially illiberal. To such minds I do not address myself. 

Far be it from me to say one word in depreciation of 
Training Colleges. I know them too well not to respect their 
work. I have already shown their importance as a part of the 
educational machinery of the country, their necessity as a 
permanent part of that machinery, and the debt the country 
owes to them. But they are not Universities — this is all I 
desire to say — any more than Sandhurst or Woolwich is a 
University. It is true that certain picked students are now 
sent from the Training Colleges to certain Universities to 
attend two of the classes there, and thus sniff the academic 
air ; but this device can never supply the place of a university 
curriculum and of university life. 

When, further, we consider that for two hundred years all 
the leading teachers of the parochial schools of Scotland have 
been supplied by the Universities, and have carried with them 
into the most remote parishes some university culture, is it 
too much to ask that a system which has been so beneficial 
in the past shall be continued and even more fully developed 
under the new Statute 1 ? At this moment no man can be 
appointed to a Public School in Scotland — and the term 
" Public School " includes all schools, with about a dozen 
exceptions — who does not possess a Government certificate. 
A raw lad from the Hebrides is, after nine or ten months' 
training, and while yet barely able to write an ordinary letter, 
while wholly ignorant of Latin, and acquainted with the merest 
1 The Act of 1872. 



IO THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 






elements of other subjects, technically qualified for any Public 
School, while a graduate of the Universities is disqualified 
until he undergoes a further examination. This seems hardly 
credible. I have taken opportunities of bringing this fact 
before authorities in the Universities from time to time since 
1872, but it is difficult to believe that they have yet fairly 
realized the actual state of things. All the new machinery 
for education will fail to produce the effect expected of it if 
this evil be not quickly remedied 1 . The Education Department 
is quite entitled to hold that a university curriculum shall be 
incomplete, so far as the teacher is concerned, if it do not 
include a knowledge of the principles and practice of education, 
but to go further than this is an insult to the Universities of 
Scotland, which these bodies, however, seem slow to feel. The 
Universities are being gradually dissociated from the teaching 
profession. The evil might be faced, and we might reconcile 
ourselves to the infliction of this blow on the university system 
of Scotland, especially as the Universities themselves seem 
to accept their position with the silence which indicates 
acquiescence, were it not that the education of the country 
is imperilled, and all that has been distinctive of Scottish 
school-life is threatened. It is to be hoped that we shall 
have ere long a recognized university curriculum for teachers, 
and that the impending danger may thus far be obviated. 

Do not imagine that the education of the country can 
be maintained by Codes, with an array of " specific subjects " 
to be paid for at so much a head. The higher instruction 
has been given in the past, not for money, but for love. 
Teachers, having formed their standard at the Universities, 
carried that standard down with them into the country, 
and were proud of the opportunity of forming classes in 
Mathematics and Latin. They felt that they kept themselves 
up to a higher level by connecting themselves with university 
work, and they saw that this higher instruction told on the 
1 The evil has now (1882) been substantially remedied. 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER II 

intelligence, and above all on the morale, of the whole school. 
It is by sending out able and ambitious men, not by the 
manipulation of a Code (although this too has importance), 
that true education is promoted. Nor is it only for those who 
are competent to go direct from the school to the University 
that a curriculum is demanded, but also for those Training 
College students of one or two years' standing, who desire to 
carry their education further, and to qualify for the higher 
primary, and for secondary, schools. 

In brief, a Faculty of Education is, in a restricted sense, 
already constituted in the Training Colleges of the Empire : 
we desire to lift this up, and to constitute such a Faculty 
in the Universities, because we believe that there is a national 
work to be done which the Universities are alone competent 
to do. It is true that, if the curriculum which we contemplate 
is carried out, a certain small proportion of Training College 
students will pass over the Training Colleges altogether. Is 
this a matter for regret or alarm ? Are the Scottish Universities, 
which have always been institutions that maintained a close 
connection with the people, and endeavoured to supply the 
wants of the various professions, to be excluded now and per- 
manently from all connection with the profession of education, 
because Training Colleges will lose a certain percentage of 
their students? The heads of the Training Colleges do not, 
I am satisfied, share the fear which some have expressed, and 
the finances of these institutions are placed far above the reach 
of injury by any such slight innovation. Those who imagine that 
Training Colleges will be materially affected, except for good, 
by this new movement, speak in ignorance of those seminaries, 
and the sources of their strength. 

Further, the institution of this Chair, by providing pro- 
fessional instruction for teachers, not only directly benefits 
the schools of the country, but it increases the importance of 
the teaching profession. It gives it an academic standing. It 
makes it possible to institute for the first time in our 



12 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

Universities a Faculty of Education, just as we may be said 
already to have a Faculty of Law, of Theology, and of 
Engineering. It thereby raises the whole question of the 
Theory and Art of Education, as such, to a higher level, and 
may, perchance, serve, more than almost any other external 
influence, to attract into the occupation of schoolmaster men 
who might otherwise pass it by for occupations which have 
hitherto ranked higher in the conventional estimate of the 
world. It promotes the movement, which has been steadily 
progressing for twenty years, for the recognition of the large 
body of teachers as a great national institution — an organized 
profession, looking, as other professions do, to the University 
as its source and head, and drawing strength and self-respect 
from that connection. 

Difficulties have been thrown in the way by a few, who are 
at a loss to know what the movement precisely means. Timid 
and distrustful, and accustomed to follow precedent as the sole 
safe guide, they have been groping about to find what other 
people are thinking. What would they say at Oxford and 
Cambridge ? What do they do at Paris and Berlin ? Now, for 
myself, I should certainly be glad to find that any educational 
movement here was supported by the concurrent approval of 
other learned centres, but I venture to submit that it is to 
Scotland that other nations may fairly look for guidance on 
this question. We in Scotland have been the true pioneers in 
popular education : and do we now lag so far behind that we 
must be sending out scouts to see what they are doing in 
the front ? The traditions and accumulated wisdom of three 
hundred years are behind us, and with all its defects our present 
educational system is, as a whole, still worthy of our past history. 
In this matter, as in others, we claim to lead Europe and 
America. Still I must so far consider the weak brother as to 
tell him that in England some of the most cultivated minds of 
the two Universities, being met together at Winchester in the 
Headmasters' Conference of 1873, discussed the question of 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 1 3 

instituting Chairs of Education in Oxford and Cambridge. 
The mere fact that the question was seriously discussed by 
such a conclave, in a country whose whole training and habit 
of mind are alien to philosophy, is itself most significant. And 
although there was no very practical issue to the Conference, 
opinions of weight were recorded. While desiderating, as was 
to be expected, arrangements for practical training, as well as 
for theoretical and historical instruction, the Bishop of Exeter 1 
wrote as follows : — 

"...It would be well worth while to provide that men 
should have the opportunity of seeing something of their 
business, and of reflecting on what they have seen, before they 
begin to teach. For this purpose the ideal system would be 
this : to have a Professor of Education, either in London, or in 
Oxford, or in Cambridge, or to have one in each ; to require 
the Professor or Professors to give certificates to such B.A. as 
attended their lectures and passed a good examination in them." 

Then Dr Kennedy of Cambridge, the eminent (Emeritus) 
Headmaster of Shrewsbury, says : — 

"...Professional lectures supported by examinations and 
certificates, which should be essential to the function of public- 
school teaching, though too much must not be expected from 
them, seem to promise some important good. Especially this, 
they would give to Education the status of a faculty and 
profession : they would oblige every master to regard his work 
as professional, as work to be done on definite principles and 
with high public responsibility. They would enhance the 
personal and social dignity of masters, and thereby promote 
their efficiency, their usefulness, and their happiness. Such 
professional lectures would, I suppose, be directed to the 
theory and history of Education, and also to the art and 
method of teaching : in all which moral and mental science 
without being directly taught would be assumed and used as 
principial and regulative." This is well said, and I willingly 
adopt the words as my own programme. 

1 Now Archbishop of Canterbury. 



14 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

Having heard all this, do you think that I push my 
argument too far when I maintain that the subject of 
education, as such, demands, as of right, a place in the 
university curriculum, with a view to the constituting of 
a Faculty of Education ? The philosophy of education is, in 
fact, now, in the world of letters, a distinct subject, and the 
importance and intimate relation of it to the future welfare of 
the nation require that it shall be held in academic honour, and 
provided with academic standing-room. Its relation to the 
Universities, moreover, as a means of bringing them, through 
some recognized functionary, a functionary controlled by the 
responsibilities of his position, into close connection with the 
whole scholastic machinery of the country, thereby extending 
their just influence, is sufficiently obvious. 

We have, however, still other objections to the founding of 
an Education Chair to face, proceeding mainly from those 
who take what might be called a purely academic view of the 
question. Education (they say) is an important subject, we 
admit, but it is too closely allied with practice to be a fit subject 
for university teaching. It is a subject rather for the laboratory 
of the schoolmaster than for the theoretical and historical 
prelections of a Professor. Now it is to be at once admitted 
that this is a fair subject for debate ; but I am entitled to insist 
that it shall be discussed as part of a larger question — this 
question, namely, Is a University to train for professions at 
all ? My answer to this is, that the business of a University is, 
mainly, to train for the professions, and that there ought to be 
within a University as many Faculties as there are recognized 
professions. It is not because of the claims which the Theory 
and History of Education can make to be regarded as a subject 
of general university discipline (though not a little might be 
said on this aspect of the question, beginning from Plato), that 
it seeks admission to a university curriculum. It is as a 
complement to the Faculties of Arts, and Science, as com- 
pleting the preparation of the teachers of the country for their 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 1 5 

profession, that it rests its claim. That future educators who 
are receiving their general instruction in a University should 
there also study the subject of education, is to my mind of the 
nature of a truism. Nor does it seem possible for any to hold 
another view without including in their condemnation all 
university studies which have a direct bearing on special 
professional preparation for active life. 

That a University should close its doors to all save 
theoretical studies, or at least to all save those which have to 
do with the culture of a man without regard to his future 
occupation, — is an intelligible and perhaps tenable opinion; 
but in these days it is unnecessary to discuss it. One has 
naturally much sympathy with that conception of a University, 
according to which it is constituted of a body of learned men 
whose sole business it is to pursue science and abstract studies 
generally, while admitting to their workshop only the select few 
who desire to spend their lives far from the vulgar crowd. 
This is the dream of Bacon's New Atlantis : it never existed, 
and never will exist save on a small collegiate scale. Such an 
institution as that contemplated by Bacon would require only 
the collegiate life to make it a secular monastery. All monas- 
teries have a certain sentimental charm, and this kind of 
nineteenth-century monastery might possibly gather sentiment 
round it. But our modern, especially our Scottish Universities, 
are far removed from such a conception. They are compro- 
mises between the theoretical and the practical. They aim at 
one end of their curriculum to meet and welcome the intelli- 
gence of the youth of the country, and at the other to connect 
themselves with the duties of active life. And if, in thus 
adapting themselves to the needs of the time, they have 
thought it wise to constitute or complete certain Faculties, is 
the equipping of the future teacher of the country with the 
principles, history, and methods of his special task of less 
moment than the equipping of the future engineer, physician, 
lawyer, or minister of religion ? 



1 6 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

There is yet another objection taken by a few, — an objection 
which is certainly specious. "We admit," they say, "the 
importance of the subject in itself; we recognize the desirable- 
ness of using the Universities to supply the professions of the 
country, because we think that we thereby contribute to the 
strength and dignity of those professions, and send out recruits 
who, along with their professional knowledge, carry with them 
a certain portion of university culture, and so contribute to 
maintain a high standard of social life. This culture we 
endeavour to give, regarding it as an essential part of the 
merely professional training, and that whereby we prevent the 
University from being converted into a mere aggregate of 
specialist schools. But, while admitting all this, we shall 
recognize no subject of instruction in any Faculty which cannot 
rank itself among the sciences, either in itself or by direct 
affiliation." There is much vagueness and half-thought about 
this objection. It seems to be forgotten that very many of the 
existing Chairs are divorced by their very nature from the 
category of sciences. All those Chairs which have to do with 
Humane Letters, not merely the Chairs of ancient tongues, but 
of Philosophy and Literature and History, have a place in the 
higher education of youth by virtue of qualities which are, it is 
not too much to say, antagonistic to the conception of pure 
science. The truth is that the objections urged on the 
scientific ground are a covert attack on the Humanities, and 
especially on the Philosophy of Mind in all its branches. 
The objectors start with the assumption that nothing is worthy 
of university study save science, and at the same moment they 
restrict the term " science " to aggregates and co-ordinations 
of physical facts that can be demonstrated in such a way as 
not to admit of question. There is, probably, no science in 
this, the strictest acceptance of the term, except Mathematics 
and those branches of knowledge which rest directly on Mathe- 
matics. Botany, for example, is not a science in the restricted 
sense of the term ; it may be one day a science, but as yet it is 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 1 7 

only a system of classification, and a record of interesting 
observations and reasonings on the physiology of vegetable 
organisms — so far as they go, correct and verifiable. I may be 
mistaken, but it seems to me that there is nothing to prevent 
a discovery in Biology being made, which would revolutionize 
the fundamental conception of Botany in one day. Botany 
may be held to represent other departments of knowledge to 
which the name of science is freely accorded. The objectors 
would not drive such studies as Botany out of the Universities, 
because they include them in their notion of science. The 
fact is that such objectors respect Botany and similar studies 
because they are at least possible sciences, inasmuch as they 
deal with what can be seen by the eye of sense, and handled 
and weighed and measured, and so forth. The same remark 
applies to Zoology. It is only the recent acceptance of the 
theory of Evolution which is converting these studies into 
sciences. The true objection to Education as a special 
branch of study is, when probed to its foundation, this, that 
it adds another to the list of Humane studies which already 
disturb the purely scientific intellect, — to wit, Classics, English 
Literature, Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, History, and, we may 
add, Political Economy. To History, perhaps, they may 
condescend to give academic standing-room, because after all 
it has to do with things that did make their appearance as 
phenomena on the face of the planet, and probably admit of 
some sort of co-ordination. But as to those other departments 
of thought which I have named, and all such, the sooner they 
are despatched to the limbo of ineptitudes the better. It is 
naturally disturbing to such minds to find subjects, which do 
not admit of exact treatment, assuming rank and importance 
in determining the progress of civilization, and in the regulation 
of contemporary academical arrangements. The most recent 
improvement in the microscope does not enable them to see 
the so-called things of mind, — the most delicately adjusted 
scales will not weigh them ; their genesis and their modus 

L. L. 2 



1 8 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

operandi are invisible and impalpable, and their possible and 
actual results defy any calculus. It is not only disturbing, but 
distressing that such things should be — nay, that such things 
should, in truth, constitute the great forces which in all ages 
have moved the heart of humanity, and have made the history 
of man. 

If a science be a synthetic and systematic body of truth 
regarding a department of knowledge, which starts from certain 
axiomatic statements, and, by help of a few postulates, builds 
up its fabric of verity so that each part rises out of another 
by necessary sequence, then it is well to say at once that 
Education is not a science ; nay, that it never will be a science. 
But are we to measure its right to a place in a university 
system by such stringent requirements ? If so, what depart- 
ment of study belonging to the Litterce. Humaniores will stand 
the test ? Is Metaphysics a science ? In one sense " No," in 
another it is the scientia scientiarum — the irptoTT] <£(Aocro</na.. 
Even in the field of formal Logic do not men still occupy 
hostile camps ? Of Ethics what shall we say ? For 2400 years 
men have thought, spoken, taught, but with what scientific 
result ? With this, that even now the ultimate criterion of the 
right and wrong in conduct, the nature of conscience, the very 
existence of the sentiment of duty as an inner power, are 
still matters of debate. And yet there is a philosophy, if 
not a science, of Ethics. Is History a science ? Some vainly 
imagine that it is at least a possible science. Given certain 
conditions, they are prepared, by the help of the Registrar- 
General, to predict the history of nations. But it is at once 
evident that the social movements of the whole involve the 
equally necessary movement of each individual of that whole, 
and that a science of History demands for its possibility not 
only an unbending system of physical laws within which man 
is to work, but also that man himself shall be an automaton ! 
And yet though there be no science, there is a philosophy 
of History. Is Political Economy a science ? Even now the 






THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 19 

fundamental principles of that department of knowledge are 
an arena for discussion. The question of supply and demand 
is still debated ; the difficulties of the currency question are 
still open to further discussion ; even the principle of Free- 
Trade versus Protection is still a moot point : not perhaps in 
this country ; but we must not let our insular self-complacency 
shut our eyes to the fact that in the United States and our 
Colonies, and on the continent of Europe, the principle of 
Free-Trade is not merely set aside in practice, but impugned 
by argument. The very theory of Rent, which J. S. Mill 
considers to be the pons asinorum of Political Economy, and 
the discovery of which is held to be the crowning glory of 
Ricardo, is still unsettled. Is Jurisprudence a science ? No ; 
and yet is there no philosophy of Law ? So with Education. 
I am quite willing to hand over the word " science " to those 
departments of knowledge which have to do with Mathematics, 
and with things seen and temporal, if only I am allowed to 
comprehend those other studies which truly constitute the life 
of man under the term Philosophy. As theory, Education 
allies itself to Psychology, Physiology, and Sociology. The 
materials of its teaching it chiefly draws from Philosophy, 
from the practice of the schoolroom, and from the rich domain 
of History. 

Grant all this, but still those generally well affected to 
the new study have misgivings. The Chair of Education will 
be a mere platform for the airing of theoretical views or the 
enunciation of crotchets. Now I would allay such fears by 
pointing out, in the first place, that this Chair does not exist 
for the purpose of talking at large about Education, but of 
preparing teachers for their profession, and that this practical 
aim is inconsistent with windy talk. I have some sympathy 
with the cynical Love Peacock, who, in describing certain 
social bores in the shape of men of one idea who hold forth 
in season and out of season, says: "The worst of all bores 
was the third. His subject had no beginning, middle, nor 



20 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

end. It was Education. Never was such a journey through 
the desert of mind, the great Sahara of intellect. The very 
recollection makes me thirsty." Such men are not educa- 
tionalists in any sense in which that term is applicable within 
academic walls. They are men of excitable temperament who 
have restless minds, and if they have not one fixed idea or 
crotchet, will find another. An educationalist has no crotchets. 
That man has crotchets who, having seized on that particular 
corner of a large and many-sided subject which has some secret 
affinity with his own mind, or affords the quickest passage to 
notoriety, pursues it to the death. Now, an educationalist is, 
by virtue of his very name and vocation, inaccessible to all 
petty fanaticisms. He has to deal with a subject of infinite 
variety, and so variously related to life, that he is more apt 
to be lost in hesitations and scepticisms than to be the victim 
of a fixed idea. If you wish to meet with educational crotchets, 
you must go to the specialist in this or that department of 
knowledge, who is unfortunate enough to take up the question 
of Education, as you see he often in moments of aberration 
takes up other subjects which are outside his own range of 
intellectual experience. It is only in such cases that you will 
find the confidence and self-assurance which are born of limited 
knowledge, and the pertinacious insistence which flows from 
these habits of mind. To him whose subject is Education 
crotchets are prohibited, because his opinions on this or that 
point are related on the one side to rational and comprehensive 
theory, and on the other to the daily practice of the schoolroom 
and to the needs of life. 

Having dealt thus far with what may be called the 
apologetics of my subject, and arrogated for it a place in 
our Academic system, whether we regard its inherent claims 
or its relation to the well-being of the country, I have, on the 
other hand, to avoid the error of magnifying too much its 
importance. The more abstract treatment of the theory of 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 21 

Education is doubtless, if true in its philosophy, of universal 
application. It sweeps the whole field. But this will engage 
our attention only within carefully prescribed limits, and when 
we leave this portion of our subject, we have to restrict our- 
selves on all sides. The education of every human being is 
determined by potent influences which do not properly fall 
within the range of our consideration here. The breed of 
men to which the child belongs, the character of his parents, 
the human society into which he is born, the physical circum- 
stances by which he is surrounded, are silently but irresistibly 
forming him. The traditions of his country, its popular 
literature, its very idioms of speech, its laws and customs, 
its religious life, its family life, constitute an aggregate of 
influence which chiefly make him what he is. With these 
things we have to do only by way of a passing reference ; we 
have not to deal with them. By their constant presence they 
mould the future man. They are the atmosphere of the 
humanity of his particular time and place, and in breathing 
it he is essentially a passive agent. Our business is rather 
with the conscious and active elements of moral and intellectual 
growth. We have to make the passive and merely re-acting 
creature of circumstance a free, self-conscious, rational agent, 
endowed with purposes and ideals, and we have to find the 
means of best doing this. The passive activity of our nature 
is not to be ignored in our educational methods : it is to be 
turned to use as one of our most potent instruments, but it 
is mainly the self-conscious forces that we have to educe and 
direct. Even in doing this, we are bound by external con- 
ditions, and must take note not only of the almost irresistible 
forces around us, but of minor conditions of time, place, and 
circumstance. 

Each successive century, and the traditions and circum- 
stances of each country, nay, the genius of each people, 
present to us the educational problem in ever-changing aspects. 
Educational systems cannot be manufactured in the study. 



22 . THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

Our theory of the end of all education and the means by 
which that end has to be attained may be, or rather ought 
to be, always the same : but the application of that theory 
must vary with varying external conditions. What present 
defects have we here and now, and to what dangers are we 
exposed? is the form which the practical question must take 
with us. To illustrate, I would say that one of our chief 
dangers in these days is the over-instruction of willing and 
ingenuous boys. We are in the very midst of what will after- 
wards be designated the information and examination epoch of 
Education. We are in danger of confounding the faculty for 
swallowing with the faculty for digesting. To borrow words 
from biological science, we sometimes proceed as if the mind 
of man grew by accretion and not by intussusception. The 
system of universal tests has encouraged this. Now a system 
whereby the teachers of the country are converted into 
"coaches," is, by its very nature, hostile to the true conception 
of Education. No school which converts itself into a coaching 
establishment is a place of education in the proper sense of 
that term. There is a repose, a calm, a stability in the steady 
march of all sound education, which is alien to the feverish 
spirit that animates the ante-chamber of an examination- 
room. 

The aim of the educationalist is not the giving of informa- 
tion, nay, not even instruction, though this is essential, but 
mainly discipline ; and the aim of discipline is the production 
of a sound mind in a sound body, the directing and cherishing 
of the growth of the whole nature, spiritual and physical, so 
as to make it possible for each man, within the limits of the 
capacity which God has given him, to realize in and for himself 
with more or less success, the type of humanity ; and in his 
relation to others to exhibit a capability for wise and vigorous 
action. This result will not be attained by pressure. By 
anticipating the slow but sure growth of Nature, we destroy 
the organism. Many and subtle are the ways in which Nature 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 23 

avenges itself on the delicate, complicated machinery of man ; 
but avenge itself somehow it will and must. 

It is difficult to say which is the more pernicious, that 
system which overstrains the active intelligence of the willing 
and ambitious boy, or that which fills his mind or rather, 
let us say, his memory, while as yet mainly passive, with the 
results of mature thought, and endows him with a kind of 
miniature omniscience. Those who survive such methods of 
training, may, doubtless, be very useful agents, very serviceable 
machines, but they will rarely initiate. With a few exceptions, 
their minds will be either exhausted or overlaid. That elasticity 
of spirit which enables a man always to rise to the level of 
the varying requirements of the day and hour in the Family 
and the State, that free movement of will which is ever ready 
to encounter more than half way the vicissitudes and exigencies 
of life, that vivacious intelligence which maintains throughout 
life an unceasing love of knowledge, that soundness of brain 
and muscle which reacts on the inner self by giving steadiness 
to moral purpose, will assuredly not be promoted by forcing 
more and more subjects into the school curriculum, and 
applying the pressure of constant examinations by outside 
authorities. We want men who will be ready for the crises 
of life as well as for its daily routine of duty, and who will, 
by their mere manner of encountering even their ordinary 
work, contribute to the advance of the commonwealth in 
vigour and virtue. Such men alone are fully competent for 
all the services which their country may demand from them. 
They may be slowly grown ; they cannot be manufactured 
under a system of pressure. Great Britain has had many 
such ; Scotland has been prolific of them. The intellect, 
the will, and the arm of Scotsmen, have done, we flatter 
ourselves, their full share in creating the British Empire, 
and it has been done by virtue mainly of the breed of men, 
and by such restricted education as Arithmetic, Latin, and 
the Shorter Catechism afforded. No superincumbent load 



24 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

of impossible tasks oppressed their minds while yet im- 
mature. 

Do not draw a hasty inference from what has now been 
said. The requirements of the time in which we live, the 
industrial competition of one nation with another, the revo- 
lution in the arts of war, all demand that the materials of 
Education should change with changing conditions of life. 
I am quite alive to this necessity — but the inner form must 
remain ever the same. For after all that can be said, the 
main object of our efforts must be the growth of moral 
power in the future man. If we would secure this object, 
the pursuit of it must control and regulate the instruction 
we give, and the method of giving it. Above all, we must 
not be in a hurry. Having faith in the quiet processes of 
Nature, we must, as educators, be calm, deliberate, and ever 
regard the end. 

The power which we desire to foster is the product of Will 
and of natural force. It is difficult to separate these two 
elements in any act, but for purposes of thought they may be 
regarded as distinct. I shall refer again to the element of 
natural force : our present concern is with power in its 
intellectual and moral relations, which is Will. It operates in 
the region of intelligence and emotion alike. The ground and 
root of intellectual and moral activity is ultimately the same, 
and the end is the same — the Ethical life. If this can be 
shown analytically, we shall reduce to unity the whole idea of 
Education in its merely formal aspect, and supply a conception 
which, while helping us to estimate the value of educational 
instruments and methods, will, at the same time, exalt and 
guide our conceptions of duty as educators. 

Power, however, cannot work on nothing, and we have 
next to consider it in its concrete relations, in order that we 
may discern and exhibit the content, as well as the form, of 
the educational idea. Our range of discussion is in a Chair 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 25 

of Education limited by the practical object which we have 
immediately in view — the production of the good citizen ; but 
this, though our primary, is not our ultimate aim. Citizenship 
is not the end of human life, but only a means to an end. 
For the ultimate reference of all thought and action of man 
is to himself as a personality. Christianity, which teaches the 
most thoroughgoing altruism, also teaches this; and in teaching 
this, it deepened the foundation of the modern doctrine of 
culture which had been laid by the Greeks. Speaking quite 
generally, Culture may, for want of a better word, be accepted 
as the end of all exercise of intellectual and moral power, and 
therefore in its ultimate result the " real " end of education, just 
as power is the "formal" end. 

But in accepting " Culture" as a fit expression for the "real" 
end of education, we have to examine carefully the features of 
this god as they appear on the canvas of modern litterateurs 
and distinguish our own conception from theirs. No finality, 
no perfectness is possible for man, and culture therefore must 
be restricted, viewed educationally, to the idea rather of a 
process than of an attained and stable product. It is the 
harmonious and continuous growing of a man in all that 
pertains to humanity. Culture in the sphere of education is, 
I say, a continuous process — the harmonious balancing of all 
the varied forces that constitute the life of a human soul. 
Now such a balancing is impossible save round some centre. 
From this may be deduced two practical conclusions on 
education in respect of its content. First, that intellectual 
culture will be most thorough when a man has some leading 
subject or group as the centre of his intellectual activity ; and 
secondly, that moral culture, the harmonious growth of the soul, 
is possible only where there is a centre round which all the 
moral and aesthetic elements of our nature turn. That centre 
is God Himself, round which great reality the sentiments, 
emotions, hopes, and aspirations of the moral life range them- 
selves. In God alone the ethical life has true existence. If 



26 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

for God we substitute Self, we substitute an empty and barren 
fact in the room of a pregnant and life-giving Idea. 

When I say that it is an essential condition of vigorous 
intellectual growth that a man should have some prime subject 
of thought and study, I do not of course mean that every man 
must be a specialist. A specialist, in the strict sense of the ■ 
term, is a man who has so used up both his powers and his 
mental interests in one specific direction as to weaken his 
capacity for all other objects, and to narrow his mental range. 
A study prosecuted so exclusively weakens the judgment for all 
else. A leading subject, but not an exclusive subject, is 
wanted, and this will be found to strengthen the judgment for 
all else. In the moral region, again, the permanent centre of 
all our thought and activity, which is God, so far from narrow- 
ing, expands the growing man. The central idea is like a sun, 
under which the whole being lives and grows, and from which 
each individual part draws warmth and strength. Culture 
without this centre is the depravation of a great idea, and 
has no object higher than self. Self can form no true centre 
to self. 

Moral culture, further, must not only find its centre outside 
of self in God, but it must express itself in action if it is to live. 
It is a misuse of terms to call that culture which, labouring 
under the baleful influence of self-worship, has forgotten that 
power can fulfil itself only in action. With some minds of 
strong aesthetic proclivities, culture issues in a kind of paralysis 
of judgment. The soul floats in the dim and dreamy potenti- 
alities of sentiment and exhausts itself in literary appreciations. 
The man of this kind of culture indulges himself in the 
perpetual contemplation of himself and his surroundings, is 
frequently distinguished by a spurious amiability, not seldom 
nourishes feeling in a self-imposed retirement from the duties of 
citizenship, and occupies himself with the contemplation of his 
own refined sensibilities, ever repeating to himself the words 
which Cicero puts into the mouth of the god of Epicurus, "Mihi 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 27 

pulchre est : ego beatus sum." This result indeed is the very 
Nemesis of a culture which has lost its way. It is the fate of 
the literary, no less than of the religious, recluse. Depend 
upon it, Nature, which is strong and virile, will have none of 
this : it demands the active manifestation of such power as we 
have, in expressed thought or living deed. Thus then only 
does moral culture reach its true aim, by first centering itself 
in God, and next by forgetting itself in action. 

Culture, then, which we may accept as an expression for the 
sum of the end of education in respect of content, as distin- 
guished from the end of education with respect to form (which 
end is Power), is the harmonious growing of all that is in man ; 
as a harmonious growing of intellect it demands a prime 
intellectual study, but discourages specialism ; as a harmonious 
growing of the moral life, it must have a centre round which it 
may balance itself, other than itself, and that centre of truth 
and reality is God, the source and sustainer of life, the begin- 
ning and the end of human endeavour : finally, as a living and 
wholesome as well as a harmonious growing, it has to seek the 
very conditions of its existence outside itself in action. It 
finds in the opportunities of life at once its nourishment, the 
conditions of its vitality, and the measure of its soundness. It 
lives neither from itself, in itself, nor to itself. 

Culture thus interpreted is not, you will at once see, 
unpractical in its aims in the hands of the educationalist. For 
we find that it cannot be truly promoted save by ever keeping 
in view the practical issue of all training — the rearing of a 
religious people, and the preparation of youth for social duty 
and for the service of humanity, whereby alone they can truly 
serve and fulfil themselves. In its practical relations to the 
science and art of education, the term will be found pregnant 
with suggestion as regards method also. For in the intellectual 
sphere, as we have seen, it enjoins unity of purpose as opposed 
to fragmentary encyclopsedism, and in the moral sphere the 



28 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

need of the religious idea and the conception of social duty, 
without which all our moral sentiment and moral discipline 
would be jointless and invertebrate. 

The educational sceptic will say, " These be brave words : 
what has this culture to do with the education of the masses ?" 
I might reply that I deal here with education, and not merely 
with the education of those whose school-time ends at twelve 
or thirteen years of age ; but I do not choose to take refuge in 
a reply which would involve me in the confession that the 
education of one class of the community is essentially unlike 
that of another, and has different aims. Were it so, there 
would be no unity in the idea of education — and this would be 
to say that there is no idea of education at all. The thread of 
intellectual discipline, of moral purpose, and of culture runs 
through all education alike. The end is the same and the 
processes are the same. The seed which we sow in the 
humblest village school, and the tender plant which there, 
through many obstacles, forces itself into the light by the help 
of the skilled hand of the village schoolmistress, are not 
different in kind from the seed and the plant which in more 
favourable soil, and by force of a higher organization, grow up 
into a Leibnitz or a Bacon. To some extent indeed we may 
say that education is at every stage complete in its idea and 
uniform in its methods. It is with a process, not a consum- 
mation, that the teacher has to do, and with an unfinished 
process that he has always to be content. With every 
individual soul he has to deal as with a being that lives for 
ever, and that may carry forward its growth and the impulse he 
gives it after this brief life is past. It is only when we commit 
the vulgar error of confounding growth of soul with intel- 
lectual acquisition that we depreciate the possible results 
of primary education. The experience of us all testifies to 
this and justifies and sustains our loftiest hopes. Have we 
not all seen the highest ends of education attained in lives 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 29 

limited in their scope, brief in their duration, and barren of 
opportunity ? 

" In small proportions we just beauty see, 
And in short measures life may perfect be. : ' 

Having thus set before you the two-fold end of education in 
respect of form and of content, — power and culture, — our next 
duty, in working out a theory of education, is to follow the 
secret inner movements of Mind whereby it reaches these ends. 

It is precisely at this point in the process of our thought 
that a new consideration is forced on us. For we find that the 
formal processes that tend to discipline and power and the 
processes that tend to culture cross and recross each other. 
This is explained by the fact that while it is necessary, for 
purposes of exact thought, to distinguish the formal and the 
real, these two are in truth one in a concrete third notion. 
Culture without the presence of a dominant and regulative 
inner power is impossible ; on the other hand, an inner 
regulative power, save as the centre of an abundant material of 
cognitions and emotions ranged and co-ordinated under 
supreme and governing principles, is an empty abstraction. 
The two unite together in the Ethical life. The more or less 
of knowledge or of faculty is a small matter ; the Ethical life is 
all in all. It is because the formal and real are in truth 
one in their issue that we find it impossible, save in a very 
rough way, to separate the processes of the growth of power, 
which are disciplinal, and the steps of the growth of culture, 
which constitute the real in knowledge. By fixing their atten- 
tion too much on one side or the other, men take a partial 
view of education, and partial opinions are apt to degenerate 
into partisan views. The true conception of education is a 
conciliation of both ; but it is finally governed, it seems to me, 
by the formal, and not by the real, element ; because the 
distinguishing characteristic of man is that, while he is of 
Nature, he is also above and outside Nature. By Will it is 



30 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

that man is what he is. In my estimate, therefore, of the com- 
parative claims of the disciplinal and the real in educating, 
priority is to be assigned to the former. 

It will be at once evident that the side from which we 
regard the idea of education will determine the value which we 
attach to particular studies, and the methods of intellectual 
and moral training which we shall most affect. But when we 
pass from the general consideration of the formal and the 
real elements in education, and the part which each plays in 
the production of that unity "a completely fashioned Will," 
which is the goal of our labours, and descend to the mental 
processes themselves whereby intellectual and moral elements 
are taken into the structure of the life of a rational being and 
contribute to its organic growth, we are on ground common to 
all. In this field of inquiry, as in every other, we are but the 
ministers and interpreters of Nature. The subtle processes 
whereby the moral and intellectual life of man is built up are 
in truth processes of education. To trace these is a difficult 
task, and one in which we cannot hope wholly to succeed. 
But we may go on in full faith that there is a way in which 
Nature works by moral and intellectual discipline to the growth 
of power, and by knowledge to the growth of culture. The 
analysis which we institute to ascertain this way is not influ- 
enced by our philosophical theory : it is simply a question of 
fact. On this analysis rests the whole system of Methods of 
instruction and of school-keeping, which ought to constitute at 
least one -half of the course of instruction given from this place. 
In the sphere of the Understanding, for example, by what 
cunning process does intelligence take to itself the materials of 
its life ? A matter this of great importance ; for the determi- 
nation of the different stages of the growth of the intellect 
determines at the same time the period at which the various 
subjects of instruction, and the diverse aspects of these, are to 
be presented to the child, the boy, and the youth respectively, 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 3 1 

in such a way as to ensure assimilation. For it is by assimi- 
lation only that true growth is possible ; all else is mere 
acquisition, and so far from being education, it is not even 
instruction. On this subject, as indeed on all questions of 
methodology, we shall learn most from infant schools. It is in 
the teaching of the elements of knowledge that the art of 
teaching chiefly reveals itself. The title which Sturm gives to 
one of his treatises ought to stand at the head of all books on 
Method, viz., " De ludis literarum recte aperiendis." 

In the Moral sphere, again, we encounter difficulties of 
method much more grave. We have here to tread delicately 
and warily. The question of times and ways is a vital one. 
We readily perceive the folly of presenting the whole of 
knowledge in mass and at once to a child's understanding, and 
yet we do not hesitate to put at once before him the complex 
sum of moral and religious doctrine and precepts, in the hope 
of producing thereby a living result. The ideas of religion and 
the principles and precepts of morality must follow experience, 
accompany intellectual growth, and wait even on the activity 
of the imagination. The educator will approach this portion 
of his task with much earnestness and some fear. He has to 
shape and to inspire a human soul, full of sensibility, alive to 
the lightest touch, quickly responsive to every appeal of love 
and every word of hate. " A mother's scream," says Jean 
Paul, "will resound through the whole future life of a child"; 
and do we not know that the memory of a mother's tenderness 
lives for ever? Let not the instructor of youth imagine that 
he has no concern with what may be called the refinements 
and subtleties of moral training. If he does so, his psychology 
is fundamentally unsound. Even in little things the teacher 
must seek and find his opportunity. Les petites tnorales of 
good personal habits and of good manners are to him by no 
means trivial. They constitute frequently the only way in 
which he can apply to the ordinary acts of the schoolroom and 
the playground the deeper truths which inspire his teaching ; 



32 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

and they are, in the case of many childish natures, the only 
way in which those deeper truths can be brought into con- 
sciousness as living and governing forces. They are the outer 
expression of an inner state, and by the cultivation of the outer 
expression we always sustain the inner life ; nay, we sometimes 
evoke it when otherwise it would not emerge. Manners seem 
to be of slight importance, but they are often of large import, 
and are not seldom convertible with morals, as the word itself 
was among the Romans. The Laureate speaks truly when he 
says : — 

" Manners are not idle, but the fruit 
Of loyal nature and of noble mind." 

I have been speaking of intellectual and moral instruction 
and of intellectual and moral discipline ; but I would repeat 
that beyond and above both these, constituting the unity in 
which the two meet, is the Ethical life. This proposition — 
that the intellectual and moral substance of education, and 
intellectual and moral discipline, the formal and the real, are 
fused in the unity of the Ethical life — it will be my business to 
explain and make good in the more philosophical portion of 
my course. You will then see, I trust, that the ethical function 
of the teacher cannot be pressed too far. It will appear also 
that it is the ethical element which is at the root of the manly 
and generous growth of boyhood, and the sole force which can 
permanently sustain even purely intellectual effort. All labour 
of the schoolmaster is of doubtful issue as regards the merely 
intellectual resultant in his pupils, but every act which is 
inspired by the ethical spirit has its sure intellectual as well as 
moral reward. It cannot possibly be wholly lost. Here the 
spiritual forces are on our side and continually make for us. 
Indeed, if we have not this faith, we had better give the whole 
business up. 

Be it observed that the term " Ethical " is here used in 
the broad sense in which it comprehends Religion. It is 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 33 

the ethics of a religion which justify a creed before the world, 
and it is the religion of ethics which gives moral teaching a 
hold on the heart of man and a sure foundation in human 
reason. The morality of secularism has for its foundation 
self-interest, and for its sanction coercion ; it may preserve 
society ; but it is only when ethics are in union with religious 
conceptions, either passing into these or rising out of them, 
that they promote the true life of humanity. It is religion 
which affords to ethical science a basis in the infinite, and 
presents to the ethical life issues in the infinite. 

The question which next most presses for consideration 
is — What instruments or materials are most promotive of the 
end we propose to ourselves, viewed in the light of their 
ultimate unity in the ethical life ? We cannot teach everything, 
and, accordingly, have to select those instruments which by 
their nature contribute most, and most surely, to the supreme 
end of all our endeavours. By this measure we must mete 
the instruments which the present state of knowledge offers us. 
It is impossible, and were it possible it would be undesirable, 
and destructive of all sound discipline, to teach even the 
beginnings of every subject. But it ought not to be difficult 
to adjust the rival claims of Literature (including under this 
head Languages, Ancient and Modern), Science, and ^Esthetics. 
The philosophy of education is a poor affair if it cannot, out 
of the materials which are clamant for attention in the school- 
room because of their immediate use in the work of life and 
as essential prerequisites of ethical activity, find apt instruments 
for its purpose. Such questions are of great importance to the 
well-being of society. If primary instruction, for example, must 
exclude from its curriculum science, in any strict sense of the 
term, can there be any doubt that our daily instruction should 
be so contrived as to place a child in intelligent relations with 
the world in which he lives, and to enable him to look with 
the eye of reason, and not of the brute, on the phenomena of 

l. l. 3 



34 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 



the physical universe? Still less is there room for doubt, it 
seems to me, that the elements and applications of the laws 
of health and of social economy should enter into every scheme 
of instruction. It is through these subjects indeed that we 
shall at once rectify the conceptions of the pupil as to the 
sphere of duty in which God has placed him, and give 
direction, significance, and practical force to our moral 
teaching. 

In the secondary stage of education, again — that which 
immediately precedes University discipline, — the place to be 
assigned to Latin and Greek must be largely determined by 
what we mean when we name these studies. If such in- 
struction resolves itself into mere memory-work and gerund- 
grinding, it is even then not without educative uses, but it 
must make way and that quickly, for other and better 
disciplines. If, however, it is so employed as to be an 
exercise of the inductive and deductive processes of mind ; 
if the study of words and sentences be an unconscious study 
of thought, and if they become, as boys advance, a study of 
form and an introduction to the pregnant and elevating idea 
of literary Art; if the embalmed thoughts be truly made to 
breathe and the dead words to burn, then indeed we have here 
an instrument of unsurpassed and unsurpassable excellence. It 
is true that the rich records of modern life and literature now 
yield us much of the culture we seek in antiquity, but we 
cannot afford to dispel the halo which gathers round the 
remote past, and the deeds of the men who have gone before 
us. Imagination here, by idealizing, sustains morality, and is 
also the spur of the intellect. Still less can we afford to part 
with the impersonal and objective character of the teachings 
of Judaea, Greece, and Rome, and to substitute for them the 
subjective and partisan lessons of modern life. On the whole, 
I feel with Jean Paul, who says, "The present ranks of 
humanity would sink irrecoverably if youth did not take its 
way through the silent temple of the mighty past, into the 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 35 

busy market-place of life." But even after all this is said, 
and more than this, it is an anachronism to give such studies 
exclusive possession of the field. In the present state of 
knowledge, not more than half the school-time should, it 
seems to me, be given to ancient studies, even in the upper 
classes of professedly classical schools ; and not all boys should 
be even thus far restricted. It is a discredit to our great 
Educational Institutions that any boy of seventeen should be 
in ignorance of such things as the elements of Physics and 
Physiology. 

As yet, except when alluding briefly to the conditions of 
power, I have been talking of the education of man as if I 
were speaking of spirits in a world of spirits. From birth 
to death, however, Man is subject to external circumstances 
which are for the most part too mighty for him. He seems 
to rise out of a physical organization : it is the outer which 
at first evokes his slumbering consciousness at birth, and the 
outer conquers him in death. With these physical conditions 
df existence he has to effect a compromise. All his receptivity 
and all his activity is in and through mortal brain and muscle. 
All his moral and intellectual activity must therefore be carried 
on with due regard to the external instrument which he must 
employ. In the treatment of the subject of education it is 
not necessary to profess any theory of the relation between 
mind and body. But this we know, that the former, both 
in its sensibilities and activities, is bound up with the natural 
laws of the latter, and to those laws it must conform, or fail 
itself to live. 

The theoretical question of the identification of thought 
and emotion with nerve-processes is simply one part of a much 
larger question, the relation of Nature itself to Mind. Evade 
it as we may, encumber it as we may with irrelevant and side 
issues, the question is really this : Are thought and person- 
ality the product of natural force, or are natural forces 

3-2 



36 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

themselves the product of thought and personality? Spenser 
says : — 

" Of the soul the body form doth take, 
For soul is form and doth the body make." 

Now this, as other cognate questions, cannot, of course, be 
from this Chair treated critically. The critical and historical 
investigation of all such subjects is otherwise provided for. 
A professor of Education must in all such matters assume a 
purely dogmatic position, and with dogma you must be here 
content. The advance of Physiology into the sphere of Psy- 
chology has been viewed by many of the older and purely 
introspective school with unnecessary alarm. It is a mistake to 
suppose that the Physiology of Mind necessarily teaches a 
materialistic theory of intelligence. This is often assumed; 
but there is no necessary connection between the two. The 
Physiology of Mind is merely the study of those material pro- 
cesses in which sensation and intelligence and even moral 
emotion are involved, and which at once condition conscious- 
ness and are conditioned by it. It is an important auxiliary to 
the study of Mind, but can never occupy the ground of the 
older Psychology. In every step of its processes it demands a 
reflection on consciousness, and an analysis of the life and 
phenomena of consciousness, to give it significance — nay, even 
to render its results intelligible. If, again, we entirely change 
our point of departure in self, and look at self and all that we 
call Mind from an outside position as a mere product of 
physical forces, as a function of matter, we are then no longer 
dealing with a merely psychological question, but, as I have 
already indicated, with a part of the larger cosmical question — 
the origination of all things ; and by our conclusions as to this 
larger inquiry, the subordinate, yet to us all-important subject,, 
must be determined. We shall probably find that the only 
effectual answer to the proposition "All is Nature," is the 
counter-proposition "All is Mind." He alone can entertain 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 37 

the thought of Mindless man who has first taken to his bosom 
the withering thought of Godless Nature. 

However this may be, we may, as students of education, 
assume that Mind works under physical conditions. Every 
sensation, every emotion, every act of memory, every act of 
thought, is effected through brain, and involves a certain 
process and a certain exhaustion of substance. The proper 
nutrition of brain, consequently, with a view to the repair of 
waste, must ever be with educationalists a matter of prime 
consideration. The effects of early overstraining or of defective 
nutritive process are in their practical relations vital. I am 
sufficiently well aware of the necessity of fresh air and clean 
skins, and spacious well-drained schoolrooms ; but these and 
other physical questions are all subsidiary to the consideration 
of the demands which the life of sensibility, emotion, will, and 
thought make on the brain. Here Physiology holds up the 
finger of warning. But instructive as the negative teachings of 
Physiology are, the positive contributions which it has to make 
to the philosophy of education are even more valuable. The 
intimate connection subsisting between states of consciousness 
and cerebral changes, and the relation of these, when repeated, 
to what may be called the " set " of the nerve-apparatus, bring 
to view with a vividness which is beyond the reach of the 
ordinary psychology, the manner of the formation of habits of 
feeling, thought, and action. Indeed there is nothing more 
encouraging to the earnest teacher than the study of the 
Physiology of Habit. 

It will now be more clearly apparent why I selected the 
word "Power" to denote the formal end of Education. It 
is preferable to Will, because this has to do rather with moral 
and intellectual relations regarded purely as such. When an 
active and free, self-determining, ever-ready will is aided by 
those physical conditions which determine the healthful activity 
of all the bodily organs, so that they respond willingly to the 
demands made on them, we have a complex state before us. 



38 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

There is a natural volition, the issue of mere life and health 
in our physical frame, which bounds forward to ally itself with 
the movement of Rational Will, and gives to the latter a certain 
steadiness and self-assurance. To this combination of free will 
with the gladly co-operating volition of the bodily organization 
we assign the name of Power. 

It would appear, from what has been said, that in dealing 
with Education we touch various departments of knowledge, 
but there is little danger of our wandering : for the fixing of 
the ends of education will at once impose a limit on our 
studies, and give stability to them. It will protect us both 
from vague speculation and from tedious detail. To enter 
into questions of philosophy, is so far from being incumbent 
-on us that to do so would be to defeat the specific objects 
for which this Chair has been founded. The consideration of 
these questions has been already provided for in the University 
curriculum. But while the professor must here, as representing 
a practical subject, avoid all speculation, he must yet find some 
dogmatic philosophic basis as a support for his thought, if his 
teaching is not to be an aggregate of disjointed essays. In 
Psychology and Physiology he must lay his foundations ; but 
from these departments of knowledge he will select only such 
materials as have a direct bearing on education, and give 
significance and the force of law to educational ends, processes, 
and methods. 

This portion of our course has to be treated in detail as 
belonging to the Art of Teaching, and will necessarily occupy 
much of our attention. It will be illustrated by model lessons, 
and by observation of the procedure of the best schools. The 
means of obtaining practice in teaching will also, it is hoped, 
be provided. 

Thus informed as to the ends and philosophy of Education 
and the rational grounds of pedagogic methods, we shall then 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 39 

find ourselves in a good position for surveying History. As 
we read the records of the past we shall see that education 
by and in the family, was early overpowered by the education 
of the tribe, and finally of the State. In the earliest stages of 
society, while man was yet struggling for subsistence, education 
could only mean the fitting of a man to secure for himself the 
necessary protection and food ; nor is this primary necessity 
ever to be lost sight of as the basis of all educational systems, 
even among the most cultivated nations. As society advances, 
division of labour and the rudiments of professions extend the 
sphere of human life and the conception which the more 
thoughtful form of man's capabilities, needs, duties, and destiny. 
Religion, Law, and Medicine become gateways of speculation ; 
and through speculation it is that humanity has been enabled 
to rise. Speculation may be said to begin when knowledge 
for its own sake becomes an object of pure desire, and man 
becomes an object of interest and wonder to man. As soon 
as men surmise their own greatness, apprehend that each is 
valuable not only for what he can do, but for what he is, and 
that man does not live by bread alone, the idea of Culture 
enters — which contemplates the growth of man to the full 
stature of his race. In the educational history of ancient 
nations, especially of Greece and of Rome, we shall see these 
ideas take form. The process of historical evolution will thus 
furnish a continual illustration of the Philosophy of education, 
and while guarding us against the errors of other times, recall 
to us great ideas which we are apt to push rudely aside with 
the vulgar self-assurance that distinguishes a mechanical age, 
oblivious of the debts it owes to the past, and ignoring its 
moral inheritance. 

We shall find, too, much instruction from the study of 
the educational organization of other countries, and much 
encouragement from the study, in their historical connection, 
of the systems of those who have been eminent as educational 
reformers. Those systems are generally full of suggestive. 



40 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

material, even when their leading ideas must be pronounced 
partial and inadequate. 

I have now endeavoured to vindicate, as fully as our limits 
permit, the position of this Chair in an academic curriculum, 
and also to indicate the nature of the instruction which it 
proposes to give to those fitting themselves for the work of the 
school. It seems to me that if the future teacher of the higher 
class of public schools be carried through such a course, he 
will not merely be better fitted for his professional work than- 
now, but be personally benefited by the mental discipline which 
the curriculum will afford. Going forth to the duties of active 
life instructed in the ends, processes, and history of Education, 
he will not work blindly, but, connecting his daily duties with 
the philosophy of man and the needs of life, he will see all 
methods of instruction in their rational grounds ; and allying 
himself with the long history of his profession, he will regard 
with that self-respect, which is alien to self-conceit, his position 
as the responsible distributor, within his sphere, of the accumu- 
lated knowledge and civilization of his time. Going forth, too, 
with an inspiring motive suggested by the ethical end towards 
which all his labour tends, he will carry with him the moral 
fervour which we demand of a minister of sacred things. All 
instruction, all discipline will be truly valuable in his eyes only 
in so far as they subserve that ultimate ethical purpose in which 
the form and content of education finally unite. Set apart to 
educate children for the State — whatever instruments he may 
use, whatever methods he may pursue — this purpose will ever 
be present to his thought, exalting his life and sustaining his 
activity. It is only by labouring towards this end that he 
can fitly discharge his special function in society, find a sure 
reward even in partial success, and, in the words of Milton, 
" store up for himself the good provision of peaceful hours." 
What is it to him that he should teach this or that particular 
subject if he fail to build up and elevate the whole humanity 



THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER 41 

of his pupils ! And should he pursue any other purpose than 
this, and pursue it even with apparent success, what will be 
the result in the generations that are to follow? A mere 
sharpening of the wits of men, but no wit to find the true 
way. "What an infinite mock is this," says Shakespeare, "that 
a man should have the best use of his eyes to see the way of 
blindness ! " 

In conclusion, let me say that if the teacher can be led to 
rise to the full conception of his task, and to understand that 
he is in truth one of the great moral forces of society, one 
of the conservators of civilization, he will be among the first 
to resist all attempts to divorce his daily work from the ethical 
and religious life of his time. This follows from the idea of 
education and of the educator's function, which I have en- 
deavoured to set forth. He will at once see that so to divorce 
him is to throw him out of all relation to the true humanity 
of the past and of the future, and to abrogate that which is 
at once his highest duty and greatest privilege. He will also 
feel that if he accept restriction to the secular, he must be 
content to forego the full measure of the social respect and 
State-consideration which are rightfully his due. Ordained to 
the priesthood of the school, and held by society to be so 
ordained, he will not find it necessary to clamour for a social 
recognition which will be freely accorded to him whose office 
it is, in the words of Tennyson, 

"... to rear, to teach ; 
Becoming as is meet and fit, 
A link among the days to knit 
The generations each with each." 

If men can be sent forth from the University for the service 
of their country, so equipped and so inspired, the Chair of 
Education will have made good its claim to a place in the 
academic curriculum, and the objects of the Founders will be 
attained. 



42 



II. 



ON PROFESSORSHIPS AND LECTURESHIPS 
ON EDUCATION 1 . 

When I was invited to read a paper on " Professorships 
and Lectureships on Education," I concluded that my thesis 
was not so much the desirableness of such Professorships and 
Lectureships generally, as the propriety of instituting them in 
our Universities. I certainly was entitled to presume that a 
subject which had engaged the thoughts of Plato, Aristotle, 
Cicero, Quintilian, Lucian, Montaigne, Locke, Milton, Rousseau 
and Kant was in itself worthy of investigation, and of being 
followed as a special department of study by those who pro- 
posed to devote their lives to educational work. 

Let me remind my audience that professional training in 
the sphere of primary instruction is already an accomplished 
.fact in the State (Denominational) Training Colleges ; and, 
though doubtless susceptible of improvement, it is a universally 
recognized success. Education as a Philosophy and History is 
now professed in many German and American Universities. 
The question which we here and now have to consider — a 
question in my opinion ripe for settlement — is the philosophic 

1 Delivered at the Educational Conference of the International Health 
Exhibition, London, 1884. 



PROFESSORSHIPS AND LECTURESHIPS ON EDUCATION 43 

and historical study of education in the Universities of Great 
Britain, and the need of such a course of study for all who 
intend to become middle and upper schoolmasters. 

It is true now, as it has been in the past and will be in the 
future, that some of the best teachers have never read or heard 
a word of educational philosophy or method. These men possess 
that happy combination of powers fitting them for the doing 
of a specific work in the world, which we call genius. Such 
natural endowment and aptitude we find in every department 
of human activity. In the arts of painting and sculpture this 
gift of genius is conspicuous. None the less have we schools 
of art, because we believe that even the greatest genius is 
bettered by being placed, when young, in possession of the 
inheritance of tradition. No man, however great his powers, 
should be allowed to waste them in finding out anew for him- 
self the mere commonplaces of his art. 

Teaching or instructing is also an art. All admit this. In 
instructing, the individual teacher is supreme over his pupils. 
Nine-tenths are wholly dependent on him for what they may 
know, while the remaining one-tenth — the select few — are very 
largely his debtors. All again depend on him for guidance 
and for the manner of their knowing, that is to say, whether 
acquisition be mainly through memory, their memory becoming 
a storehouse of unorganized facts and of conventional ready- 
made opinions (which through mere mental habit finally harden 
into irrational convictions), or whether it be through the living 
activity of their own reason. It is in the evoking of this living 
activity, that the great art of instruction consists. Is it possible 
to do this? If so, what is the way of doing it? Even the 
most unthinking of the teaching profession will grant that there 
is some way, and that in this, as in all else, Nature has a process. 
If any still hold that there is no process, they condemn them- 
selves to the ignoble and unworthy occupation of making boys 
learn things by rote, and inflicting some sort of physical suffering 
if they fail to do so. The man who with such views becomes a 



44 ON PROFESSORSHIPS AND 

teacher when he might enlist as a soldier or sailor, must, it 
seems to me, be a very poor creature. 

I think we may now-a-days assume that even the most 
sceptical among schoolmasters repudiate the unphilosophical 
conception of their work • and, were it only to save their self- 
respect, they will claim that it is their privilege, as well as their 
duty, to open and strengthen the intelligence of their pupils 
through instruction in the various subjects of a school curri- 
culum. Now, the most elementary condition of this kind of 
instruction, it will be admitted, is, that boys shall understand 
what they are learning, and be intellectually interested. Grant 
this, and we grant all ; for the human mind has a way whereby 
alone it can understand anything, a way as certain and as 
exclusive of other possible ways as its way of seeing, which is 
with the bodily eyes alone, and not with the elbows. It is not 
necessary, fortunately, that we should be conscious of our way 
of seeing in order that we may see, or our way of understanding 
in order that we may understand. But if our bodily seeing 
could be improved by another, and depended largely on lessons 
given us in seeing, it would, I presume, be desirable at least, 
if not necessary, that the eye-trainer should be aware of the 
conditions of seeing and the way in which we see. If there be, 
then, a way of understanding, instruction must proceed accord- 
ing to that way, if it is to be instruction and not mere mechanical 
memory-work. Doubtless, a boy may be brought to learn by 
rote what he does not understand. This is the Chinese plan, 
and is also, I fear, not unknown in some of our public schools in 
Great Britain. The expectation is that he will some day or other 
understand what he commits to memory. But if the ultimate 
object be the understanding of what is learnt, why should we 
not begin with this and make sure of it ? I do not contend 
for the opinion that a boy need fully comprehend all that he is 
taught, but I hold that he is competent to comprehend all that 
he ought to be taught sufficiently well to make it fit into his 
reasoning processes and into the already acquired furniture of 



LECTURESHIPS ON EDUCATION 45 

his mind. There is understanding and understanding. A boy 
of fifteen may learn and, in a sense, understand Wordsworth's 
"Poet's Epitaph," but he does so in a different sense from that 
in which Mr Browning understands it. Understanding, then, 
being the end we, as instructors, have in view, and there being 
a way whereby a human being understands, we truly instruct 
only if we follow that way. Now, a statement of that way is a 
statement of method ; and as it is further a statement of the 
process of intelligizing, it is psychology in its most interesting 
and suggestive form, for it is an account of the intellectual 
powers as living and acting, and not merely as dissected and 
tabulated. 

The instructor, then, ought to know the general process by 
which we know — in other words he must know the psychology 
of the intelligence. This, I think, may be conceded. 

But not only is there a general method : there are particular 
methods. Method, in the large sense, is essentially the same 
for all subjects, but its application to the various subjects of 
instruction is not always obvious. I have seen a teacher teach 
arithmetic in accordance with sound method, and make the 
most glaring mistakes when he gave a lesson in grammar ; and 
again, I have seen geography well taught, and language taught 
by the same man in a hopelessly ignorant and unfruitful way. 
And why ? Because the teacher — I refer now specially to those 
trained in Normal schools, where methods form an essential 
part of the course — had understood for himself the method 
which he had been taught to follow in one subject, but had not 
comprehended the application of the method to another subject; 
or, it might be that he had seen lessons well given in the one 
subject, and not in the other. And why did he make this 
blunder ? Because he had not the key to all methods, which 
is to be found in general Method alone. He had, in short, no 
psychology, and he was, consequently, a mere mechanical 
method-monger, having no living source of method in himself; 
wanting, therefore, in elasticity, in confidence, in thought, in 



46 ON PROFESSORSHIPS AND 

the liberty wherewith philosophy makes the teacher free. 
Particular methods, then, have to be taught, but they are dead 
and barren if we have not breathed into them the spirit of 
philosophy. 

But not only is there a way of instruction, there is also an 
order in time — an order in which each subject of instruction is 
to be begun — each part of each subject — each lesson of each 
part. All this depends ultimately on the order of the growth 
of mind, and here the instructor is brought face to face with 
physiological, as well as psychological, conditions. Accordingly, 
the instructor must study the elements of physiology as well as 
psychology, especially in their relation to the nervous system, 
by which we feel, and think, and do. 

Then come considerations as to the manner of the teacher 
in instructing, the quantity of instruction, and the circumstances 
favourable and unfavourable to instruction. Here, again, we 
touch physiological as well as mental conditions. 

Still further, we have to consider the end we have in view 
in instructing, and, as determined by this, the materials of 
instruction. How, I would ask, can such supreme questions be 
rationally approached save in relation to a philosophy of life ? 
Here, indeed, all must philosophize, either consciously or un- 
consciously. 

And just at this point, where we begin to consider Ends, 
we perceive that we are as yet only at the threshold of the 
subject ; for we are now passing from the work of the mere 
instructor to that of the educator. The whole moral and 
spiritual field opens out before us. Were there no schools and 
no teachers, we might be content to look on passively while a 
boy's hereditary predispositions and natural environment 
moulded him. But we are not at liberty as educators to do 
this without committing professional suicide. If the delicate 
and complex task of giving a character and tendency to the 
inner life of the soul be truly ours (and if it be not, then what 
is our task ?), surely it is our duty to study the conditions of 



LECTURESHIPS ON EDUCATION 47 

the growth of the moral and spiritual life. This, again, is 
psychology in its deepest philosophical relations. 

Those who concur with what has been said, hold also, as a 
matter of course, that the future teacher and educator should 
be prepared for his task on the lines I have indicated ; and that 
for this preparation professors of the subject are needed. 
Those who deny that there are principles in education, who 
think that " rule of thumb " governs all, will, of course, fight 
shy of professors. The question, accordingly, of professorships 
of education depends entirely on the view we take of education 
itself, and hence my way of approaching the subject prescribed 
to me on this occasion. Is education a subject for inquiry? 
Is it a subject at all in an academic sense ? If it be a subject 
at all, it is manifestly a department of philosophy. As such it 
claims a place in the Faculties of Philosophy in our Universities. 

And just as philosophy itself is enriched by the history of 
opinion, so is the subject of education enriched by the history 
of theories, of national systems, of scholastic experiments. Thus 
are many errors marked out for avoidance, and many truths 
illustrated and confirmed. 

Again, I do not see how many of the vexed questions of 
education are to be settled except scientifically. Look at the 
programme of this Conference and you will see how many 
subjects are still under debate throughout Europe and America; 
and there are a hundred others. How am I honestly to settle 
the question, say, of Latin versus elementary Science in second- 
ary schools, unless I can show how the one acts on the human 
mind and how the other acts ? Are language and literature the 
supreme subjects ? If so, why ? Must Greek give way to 
French and German in the general curriculum of secondary 
schools ? And so with numerous other questions which are now 
put, and which must arise in the future before the day is reached 
when the State will recognize education as its primary and 
supreme function, next to that of national defence and the 
administration of justice. 



48 ON PROFESSORSHIPS AND 

Professors of the Philosophy, Art, and History of Education, 
then are, I hold, needed, and all aspirants to the office of 
schoolmaster should be required to study under them for a 
time. There are, however, three objections commonly urged 
which are worthy of consideration, and to which I shall briefly 
advert. 

First. The study of education in its philosophy and history 
will, some fear, convert our future teachers into theorists. Now 
the very reverse of this is the result of the study of a subject 
scientifically. The untrained teacher of active mind and 
philanthropic impulses will always become a theorist of some 
sort — a theorist in the sense of a faddist. But the youth who 
has been led to think out the grounds of his professional 
activity scientifically, and has been brought face to face with 
the history of his subject, is proof against the tendency to 
" theorize " in the vulgar sense of this word. He has, on the 
contrary, acquired a scientific "habit of mind" with reference 
to the subject of education. Surely the most conservative of 
headmasters prefer men under them who think, and who think 
their work worth thinking about. If they think wisely, they 
are pursuing education as a science ; and is it not better that 
in this department of professional activity, as well as in that of 
medicine, a scientific basis should be laid during the period 
of professional preparation ? Did the organization of medical 
education produce " theorists " in the vulgar sense, or extinguish 
them? 

Secondly. I have seen it objected that there can be no 
guarantee that the system of philosophy which furnishes a basis 
of principle and an educational aim will be sound. It may be 
Sensationalism at one time, Kantianism at another, and again 
Hegelianism. But are not the same objections to be urged 
against academic prelections in all subjects that interest and 
cultivate the human mind, and endeavour to answer its never- 
ceasing questions? Take moral philosophy for example, or 
metaphysics, or even logic. And what shall we say of 



LECTURESHIPS ON EDUCATION 49 

professorial academic instruction in political economy or 
history? We believe that these subjects afford a discipline, 
and train to thought, if taught by able men ; and we take our 
chance of the rest. 

Thirdly. We are told that teaching is so much a mere art 
that practice for a few months in a good school under a 
competent headmaster is more beneficial than any possible 
course of lectures. I concur with this objection so far that I 
think practical instruction in a model school an indispensable 
part of a course of study for the teaching profession. But 
practice alone can never make anything but a mechanic. The 
element of thought, of knowledge, of principle, of science, is 
wanting, unless, indeed, the youth provides all this for himself. 
I have said above that practice, even when accompanied with 
the study of particular methods of instruction, fails to produce 
the educator : how much less can mere practice without any 
study of method or methods do so ? We have again an 
analogy in the medical profession. Clinical instruction is an 
essential part of a surgeon's preparation, but who nowadays 
would maintain that this would suffice without a knowledge of 
the sciences which give to practice a scientific basis ? And yet 
there can be no doubt that surgeons could be turned out, after 
clinical study only, fit for all the ordinary work of the profession. 
So much for current objections. 

Further, we are told that our Public Schools have such 
admirable methods, and so noble a tradition in teaching, that 
young men who enter them as assistants, and who have them- 
selves been public-school boys, are "to the manor born," and, if 
they have anything to learn will soon learn it by watching the 
headmaster, and submitting themselves to his advice. That the 
young assistant will by these means acquire the habit of his 
school, whatever that may be, I do not doubt. But is that 
habit a good one? Has the headmaster himself studied 
philosophy and method? Is he not simply repeating his 
predecessors ? Or, is he perchance inspired ? No one will be 

L. L. a 



50 ON PROFESSORSHIPS AND 

found at this time of day to defend Keatism as it flourished at 
Eton, fagging in the forms it assumed at certain public schools, 
and other brutalities which brought shame on the name of 
Christian, not to speak of educator. I do not suppose that any 
one, save a withered survival in some endowed grammar-school 
situated in some region "remote, melancholy and slow," will 
now defend the method of acquiring the Latin grammar by 
the learning of rules in the Latin tongue. I do not suppose 
that any competent headmaster now maintains that the sole 
engine of moral discipline is the constant rod. I do not 
suppose that ignorance of geography, of history, of English, of 
the facts and laws of a man's natural environment, will now be 
regarded as an essential characteristic of the best English 
education and the mark of an English gentleman. These 
things are mostly of the past, in opinion at least if not 
in practice. But why ? To what is this fact due ? To 
writers on education, to the progress of society generally, 
and to one or two distinguished practical educators, such as 
Arnold. Were Arnold alive now, and were he to initiate a 
course of lectures on education at Oxford, would our present 
headmasters not think it desirable that their future assistants 
should sit at his feet for a couple of terms? There is no 
Arnold now, but nature repeats a type, though it never repeats 
an individual. The optical law, whereby an object seems 
smaller the further it is removed from the eye, is inverted in 
the case of men. The distance to which death removes them 
makes them larger, not smaller. You may have confidence 
that the Almighty did not exhaust Himself in the pedagogic 
field when He made Arnold. There was still some cosmic 
energy left for the production of men who could teach others 
to teach, and inspire them with the noble aims of true educators 
of youth. Grant that, through the influences to which I have 
alluded, we are now better than in the past, yet surely it is the 
insanity of self-satisfaction to conclude that now at this time 
of speaking, in August 1884, our Public Schools and Middle 



LECTURESHIPS ON EDUCATION 5 I 

Schools, and Primary Schools, are at last perfect in their aims, 
methods, and discipline. Even if they were, would it not be 
desirable that the young aspirant should be introduced to the 
principles which underlie and explain and vindicate that per- 
fection, and to the instructive history whereby that perfection 
has been happily reached, that so he may be guarded against 
degeneracy ? Would it not be desirable that a " school " of 
education should preserve for the future all that is good in the 
present ? 

Had Roger Ascham's College at Cambridge founded a 
lectureship on the first two books of Quintilian, and on 
Ascham's own work, and done nothing more, the whole 
character of English public-school education would have been 
revolutionized 300 years ago. We should have been as great 
a nation measured by the standards of imperial power and 
wealth, and in addition to this, our citizens would have had a 
better use of their brains, greater love of truth, more open 
minds, more kindly hearts, more of wisdom, justice, and 
righteousness. If I did not believe this, I should give up the 
whole question of " how to educate " as vain and empty talk : 
but I should have at the same time to give up my hope in 
humanity and in the possibility of a true civilization. 

Finally, " we admit (I understand one headmaster to say) 
that it is desirable that young teachers should study books on 
education — nay, that even the elite of the pedagogic world, the 
young master who has been a ' public-school ' boy and is 
consequently already by that fact not far from perfection, 
should read ; but as a matter of fact he does read." My answer 
is that he does not read. A return of the books on education, not 
looked into, but carefully read by the masters of public schools, 
who are, according to this gentleman, supra educationem, as the 
emperor Sigismund was supra grajiunaticam, would surprise him. 
Ask the publishers of books on education how many sell among 
the 50,000 teachers of England? But if it be so desirable that 
the said young masters should read, and if it be necessary, as 



52 ON PROFESSORSHIPS AND 

a mere matter of professional decency, to claim for them that 
they do read, it is not surely too much to ask that their reading 
should be put beyond all question, by requiring them to read 
under the direction of a professor, and to listen to his prelections 
before they plunge into their life-work. In other subjects we 
do not leave such things to chance. A clergyman should 
know Moral Philosophy and Church History ; but cognate as 
these subjects are to his clerical functions, we do not leave him 
free not to read them, in any course of preparation for the 
ministry which even affects to be adequate. 

Grant, then, that the schoolmaster is an educator, and that 
an educator should study education ; the further question 
remains where should the professors of education be placed? 
I answer where the future teachers of all schools except the 
primary receive, or ought to receive, the rest of their prepara- 
tion — viz. in our universities. This I might advocate on 
grounds of mere convenience and economy. But apart from 
this consideration, I hold that our universities, as the homes of 
science and philosophy, claim this highest of all applied 
sciences — itself indeed a science as well as an art — as part of 
their work. It is their duty, as well as their privilege, to guide 
the thought of the nation. I shall not surely be told that the 
question of the growth and life of the human mind and the way 
in which character is built up, are subjects unworthy to stand 
side by side on the academic platform with inquiries into the 
growth and life of molluscs, mosses, and crayfish, or the making 
of bridges and engines ! Schoolmasters at least will not tell 
me so ! They will not thus flaunt in the face of the public 
their self-contempt ! Let me add that the influence of such 
philosophic and historical studies as bear on education, in 
making effectual for its great ends the school-system of the 
country, gives them, on mere grounds of utility, the strongest 
of claims on our universities and on the Government. In our 
present educational system we have a very costly instrument. 



LECTURESHIPS ON EDUCATION 53 

The study of education at our universities would teach us how 
best to use that instrument for the moral and spiritual advance- 
ment of the nation. 

The elite of our Training College primary schoolmasters 
also should be required, or at least encouraged, to attend 
a professorial or academic course before entering on the 
duties of the school. This is already partially the case in 
Scotland. 

The practical question remains : Suppose we had such 
chairs at all our university seats, and in connection with them 
revived the ancient licentia docendi, or Lincentiateship in 
education 1 , how are we to secure students, and so make these 
chairs of practical utility and not mere endowments of research? 
Here many difficulties present themselves ; but there is only 
one way of finally overcoming them all. And that is by a 
Teachers' Registration Act which will virtually 2 limit the pro- 
fession to two classes of teachers — those who hold a Govern- 
ment certificate, and those who hold a university licentiateship. 
A licentiateship granted by certain corporate bodies, such as 
the College of Preceptors in England, might also be recognized. 
Were such a law passed, the cause of education — middle and 
upper-class education — would receive as powerful a stimulus 
as primary instruction received from the Acts of 1870 and 1872. 
Meanwhile, and as a provisional measure, the headmasters of 
the great public schools should let it be understood that, in 
making appointments, they will allow due weight to educational 
diplomas. 

1 A Diploma in education is now instituted in the University of 
Edinburgh and in London University ; and in Cambridge a Certificate. 

2 I say "virtually," because, for this generation, at least, a Registration 
Act should perhaps restrict itself to the qualifications of teachers of State- 
aided, Foundation, and Grammar Schools. The rest would soon follow. 
One clause affirming this, and another clause declaring the conditions of 
registration, and a third recognizing existing teachers (within certain limits), 
would make a brief but adequate Bill. There might be two classes in the 
register — those who held an academic degree, and those who did not. 



54 ON PROFESSORSHIPS AND 

In conclusion, I would ask the teachers of Great Britain to 
say in what sense their occupation is a profession if it does not 
demand professional preparation. The dignity and status of 
the scholastic occupation have hitherto been borrowed entirely 
from the clerical profession. But in proportion as laymen 
obtain scholastic appointments, to that extent must education 
find a philosophical basis for itself, if it is to hold its own 
among liberal professions. I would also point out that as that 
philosophical basis is the same for infant-school teaching and 
university teaching, its universal recognition would weld 
together the whole body of schoolmasters in one vast organiza- 
tion having common aims and engaged in a common national 
work. The primary schoolmaster and the primary school 
would thus be raised to a higher level ; lines of demarcation 
would be less strongly marked, for the work of one grade of the 
profession would then be seen to pass insensibly into that of 
the others, and the humblest pupil in the humblest infant-school 
would find himself, through his teacher, a part of a great moral 
and intellectual organization. At present, subjects of instruction 
mark off teachers into castes : the recognition of a professional 
basis would reveal that when a primary schoolmistress teaches 
the alphabet, and a "senior classic" teaches Sophocles, they 
have both, if they rightly understand their work, the same aims, 
the difference between them consisting mainly in the age of 
their pupils, and the material which they use to attain a 
common educational end. None of our institutions would 
benefit more largely by recognizing this fact than the great 
English Public Schools. 

I have been restricting myself in the preceding remarks 
chiefly to the answering of objections, and thereby, indirectly 
suggesting the functions of a Professor of Education. Were I 
to enter further into the question of the bearing of instruction 
in the philosophy of education on the aims and methods and 
personal life of the teacher, I should much exceed the limits 



LECTURESHIPS ON EDUCATION 55 

within which I am restricted by the regulations of this Congress. 
But I cannot conclude without emphasizing the fact that even 
the young man who becomes a schoolmaster, with the most 
laudable intentions and genuine interest, not only needs a 
philosophy, which points the way to method, but will himself 
be the first to demand, some solid basis for his life-work. 
What then shall we say of the others ? We cannot afford to 
close the ranks of the teaching profession against all save those 
whose true vocation it is. The ministry of the school, like the 
ministry of the Church, must be content often to use weapons 
of inferior temper. For every three millions of the population 
we need about five thousand teachers, excluding those in the 
higher seats of learning and private governesses and tutors. 
To expect to find so large a number of devout, zealous, 
sympathetic men and women ready to hand, is a fond imagin- 
ation. All the more difficult is it to command an adequate 
supply of men of this kind, that the Church attracts into its 
ranks, by a prior claim, so large a proportion of the men of 
enthusiastic temper and ideal aims. Luther's dictum, that had 
he not been a preacher he would have been a teacher, is still 
the most that any will say. It showed Luther's penetration that 
he said even so much, at a time when the school was misunder- 
stood and misprized. "I know," he says, "that this work, next 
to the office of preacher, is the most profitable, the greatest, and 
the best. Nay, I know not even which is the better of the two. 
For it is hard to make old dogs tame and old rogues upright ; 
at which task, nevertheless, the preacher's office labours and 
often labours in vain. For young trees be more easily bent 
and trained howbeit some should break in the effort. Beloved, 
count it one of the highest virtues upon earth to educate faith- 
fully the children of others, which so few, and scarcely any, 
do by their own." Ideas, however, are slow of transforming 
themselves into practical facts, and the day is probably still 
distant when the words of Luther will be reversed, and men 
who feel called to labour for the moral and spiritual good of 



$6 ON PROFESSORSHIPS AND 

their fellow-men will say, " If I must relinquish the office of 
teacher, I would be a preacher " ; and yet this is, after all, only 
the logical conclusion of Luther's own argument. As things 
actually are, however, it is vain, we repeat, to think that we can 
recruit the ranks of the teaching profession with men and 
women who are conscious that they have a " message " to 
children and youths — men and women to whom the school is a 
vocation not a trade ; and the question accordingly becomes an 
urgent one, — How can we create zeal tempered with judgment, 
judgment moved by zeal ? how can the ideal aims and the skilled 
methods of the few be conveyed into the rank and file of the 
profession — the multitude of uninspired, but we may presume 
conscientious, workers who, from various causes, find them- 
selves engaged in the duties of the schoolroom? Even 
second-hand inspiration is a great gain to the community. If 
we could fill all the teachers of our children with a lofty motive 
and supply them with a sound method of procedure, we should 
certainly do more to dignify their lives, and to sustain the 
moral vigour and soundness of the whole nation through their 
agency, than by any other means. This is truly a great 
question — a question for States and for Councils, and one 
which it is especially incumbent on Universities, as the teachers 
of teachers, to take up and carry to an issue. 

Let it not be supposed that I imagine that the education of 
the educator will of itself make a man a true teacher. A certain 
type of character and temperament is needed, if through the 
teacher the boy is to be moulded. The true teacher must 
exhibit the authority of law ; and this is never arbitrary, but 
always calm, equable, just. Rigid as maintainer of law, his 
judgments, and still more his penalties, must yet lean to mercy's 
side. He must possess that humility of mind which makes him 
reverence the spirits of children, as purer than his own, and as 
being full of spiritual possibilities, which for himself, it may be, 
are already exhausted. He must be endowed with a sympathetic 
power allied to genius, whereby he may be able daily to be 



LECTURESHIPS ON EDUCATION $J 

himself a child, to understand the failures and perversities of 
unformed wills, and the efforts and blunderings of evolving 
intelligence. His manner must be direct, candid, sincere, and 
friendly ; yet, withal, suggestive of high purpose. He must 
dominate his school as its presiding genius, its spiritual 
standard, its type of culture ; and yet he must be a child 
among children, a boy among boys, a youth among youths. 
Where are we to find teachers in whom opposites are thus 
reconciled, and whose hearts at the same time are alive with 
a love of humanity and glow with a religious zeal — men 
" moulded by God," as Thomas Fuller says — for a school- 
master's life ? It is precisely because we cannot hope to find 
them in any large numbers that there is imposed on us the duty 
of devising some means of bringing young men and women, 
whose habit of mind or tendency of nature leads them to 
devote themselves to the education of others, under the guiding 
influence of older men who can inspire them with the true aims 
of the educator and the methods by which these can best be 
attained. Aspirants of the finer temper will quickly perceive 
under such guidance the truly spiritual task of the teacher ; 
and the duller minds will, by the exhibition of the philosophy 
or rationale of education, be at least intellectually guided, if 
not also morally inspired, to form an adequate conception of 
their function in the community. They will go forth furnished 
with ideals and methods which cannot fail to bear fruit in their 
daily work to the great benefit of the nation and of mankind. 



III. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND THE 
TRAINING OF TEACHERS 1 . 

Sound practice is sound theory unconscious of itself; sound 
theory is merely sound practice conscious of itself. My thesis 
is simply this — that a teacher should be conscious of the art 
he practises, conscious of its rational basis, its process and its 
end : and that for his own sake, for the sake of his pupils, and 
for the sake of the dignity, usefulness, and influence of the 
profession to which he belongs. 

There is not time in one lecture to discuss the question 
fully, and what I have now to say is, in truth, more of the 
nature of an apologia preparing the way for an argument, than 
itself an argument. 

There is a conviction abroad — which, though it does not 
obtrude itself so often as it used to do, still influences opinion — 
that a teacher, like a poet, is born, not made. This opinion 
is due, I suppose, to the fact that they both practise arts : but 
it is scarcely necessary to point out that the arts are of different 
kinds ; nay, that in some essential respects they are to be 
contrasted rather than compared. 

1 Annual Address to the Teachers' Guild, London, 1890. 



PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND TRAINING OF TEACHERS 59 

Like most opinions which have a trick of persistently 
turning up when one thinks them dead, the dictum as to 
the divine origin of the teacher, as of the poet, has an element 
of truth in it : for it is certainly possible for a man to be born 
a teacher ; and the greatest teachers of the world have been 
born teachers. But this is simply to say that there is such 
a thing as educational genius, just as there is genius in other 
departments of human activity. If we could command the 
fountains of Nature and Providence, we should certainly take 
care to have none but born teachers. As we cannot do this, 
and as not more than one teacher in a thousand is a born 
teacher, and of the remainder, not probably more than twenty 
per cent, even half-born, we must have some way of making 
teachers out of men who desire to practise the art, and of 
making them in the image of him who is born to it. 

We cannot define genius in any department of human 
activity. After we have given such account of it as we can, 
there remains a " something " which escapes us. In art we 
recognize the fact that while genius accepts tradition, it is 
yet essentially outside rule : it makes rule. It is a subtle, 
complex, and wholly mysterious combination of faculty, which 
by a native impulse gives a new form of beauty to the products 
of the mind. We may call it feeling or inspiration. For this 
inspiration a man has to wait, and to wait in vain if he has not 
been born to receive it. By the grace of God, Raphael and 
Shakespeare were artists. So, by the grace of God, the builder 
of Westminster Abbey was an artist ; and the builders of many 
a simple church-tower that gives charm to the rural parishes of 
England, making a poem of even the most prosaic landscape, 
were also, in their degree, artists. 

The difficulty of definition, however, is not so great in the 
field of education as it is in the aesthetic arts. Were we asked 
to explain more closely wherein educational genius consists, I 
doubt if we could find any word more suitable than the old 
familiar word, Sympathy. All that a teacher needs, it has been 



\ 



60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

held, is knowledge of the subject he teaches, and sympathy; 
and I am quite willing to accept this word as a fair enough 
approximation to what we mean when we speak of the genius 
of the teacher. But I would ask you to consider with me what 
Sympathy itself means, because I think that by starting from 
what is an . educational commonplace, I shall more effectively 
convince you that all teachers should study the Philosophy of 
Mind, as containing the theory of their art. 

Now, we shall find three senses in which this word 
" sympathy " is used in its scholastic reference : in the first, 
it is the essential qualification of every teacher ; in the second, 
it borders on a vice ; in the third, it may be accepted as a fair 
enough equivalent for educational genius. 

In its first sense, it means little more in a young teacher 
than a genuine interest in the young, and a strong desire to 
help them on their way. This is not only a good thing, but 
the first and indispensable qualification of every man who 
teaches with a view to educate. If he has it not, he ought 
to find some other occupation ; for, without it, he will not 
only do no good, but much harm, and be himself of all men 
most miserable as he hopelessly fulfils the drudgery of a daily 
routine. But sympathy in this sense is nothing more than 
the ordinary impulse of good will towards our fellow-men, 
taking a specific line in the direction of those who are as 
yet young and weak. It is a manly quality, and is bred 
generally of a deep sense of the spiritual responsibility of 
the elder for the younger brother. But this simple virtue is 
not what many, in these days, mean by "sympathy" in the 
teacher. 

The second sense in which the word is used, is to mark 
a quality of mind which many admire and cultivate — viz. a 
sentimental affection for boys which shows itself in a constant 
effort to gain their regard by stooping to their level, and 
involves a good deal of attitudinizing on the part of the man. 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 6l 

The object is to influence children for good and to make them 
(I presume) like one's self. This kind of sympathy is, I think, 
the excess, and therefore the vice of what, in moderation, is 
a virtue. Aristotle, the apostle of the "mean," would not 
have approved of it. Does it not too often characterize minds 
which combine with a certain essential vanity a feeble fumbling 
after power ? They are not strong enough, or virile enough, 
in themselves to exercise power without scheming to do it, and 
taking advantage — often undue advantage — of their superior 
age and position ; always, of course, with the best intentions. 
But good intentions are a bad plea in a court of Ethics. A 
teacher must question his good intentions and the moral 
sympathy with boys out of which they are supposed to spring. 
The kind of sympathy of which we now speak impresses me 
as unwholesome, and much in need of guidance and correction. 
Is it not a kind of Protestant Jesuitry in education? The 
sympathetic sentimentalist among teachers ought, above all 
men, to be put through a stiff course of educational methods 
and science. There are many good instincts in him running 
to seed. He requires bracing up. Genuine power never needs 
to assert itself. The sympathy which some cherish as a special 
virtue of their own, leads to a constant manipulating of the 
mind of a pupil — a constant lying in wait in order to guide, 
shape, and influence. Such devotedness on the part of an 
adult to a boy necessarily conveys to the immature subject 
of the process a silent conviction that he is an interesting 
object, and so tends to engender in him a weak and narrow 
conceit rather than to foster a strong personality. The result 
is a prig. Common rumour and certain "Boys' books" tell 
us that there has been, since Arnold's time, a good deal of 
this sort of coddling — a kind of pawing of the tender mind, 
by well-meaning pedagogic moralists. Now, neither plants 
nor kittens will grow if you are constantly handling them, 
and even water takes an unconscionable time to boil if you 
keep looking at the kettle. Indeed, it is a matter of common 



62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

observation that if our much-tended plant in our aesthetic 
flower-pot sprouts at all, it always takes advantage of our 
absence to do so. 

Far be it from me to say that a teacher is not consciously 
to endeavour to exercise " influence " ; but he must respect 
individuality, and be on his guard against sympathy of the 
spurious kind I have been describing : otherwise he will overdo 
his part as educator. Even a father must respect the in- 
dividuality of his son. If he does not, he will most certainly 
be beaten in the end. Let boys alone ; but take care that 
they live under law, that they have good moral and spiritual 
food, that they do their work from a sense of duty as well as 
pleasure, and above all that they have in you, their master, a 
good strong example. To the schoolroom we may apply the 
words of Bacon: "Adest quoque ipse vultus, et aspectus 
virorum gravium qui facit ad verecundiam, et teneros animos 
etiam a principiis conformat ad exemplar 1 ." Let there be no 
mora] analysis, no unmanly and unmanning sentimentalism, no 
shedding of sympathetic tears over interesting boy-penitents. 

I fear I shall be thought to be very much (to use a 
colloquial expression) out of the swim ; for I look with 
aversion even on masters " sympathetically " taking a part 
in boys' games. By all means see that the boys have all 
necessary facilities and time for games, but then leave them 
to themselves, paying only such visits to the field as may 
-seem natural and friendly ; for boys are boys, and men are 
men. It is a false etymology, which interprets education as 
a drawing-out : it is a drawing-^/. A boy grows in intelligence 
by leaning on the stronger intelligence of his master ; in moral 
perception by imbibing his master's deeper moral convictions ; 
in conduct by forming himself on his master's formed and 
disciplined will. If, then, he is to be truly educated, he must 
be always looking up. To require masters — men in so exalted 
a position of intellectual and moral authority — to run at " hare 

1 This I quote from some other writer. It has not been verified. 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 63 

and hounds " with little boys, is, to my mind, ridiculous, and 
is one of the results of a false "sympathy." It is no mark 
of manhood, this kind of thing — this affectation of simple- 
mindedness, this condescension of unbending. Remember 
that, as Britons, we have to deal with boys who have a great 
history behind them, and a great imperial task before them — 
boys whose " blood is fet from fathers of war-proof." We have 
to " stiffen the sinews " of their minds if they are to bear their 
part nobly before God and man. The kind of sympathetic 
condescension against which I would protest weakens, and 
then flatters the weakness it has created. 

But let us come now to the third sense in which the word 
" sympathy," as applied to the schoolmaster, may be used — 
the true sense — the sense in which "sympathy" is another 
word for "educational genius." What does it mean now? It 
denotes that subtle and complex combination of faculty which 
makes a teacher, at one bound, master of his art, just as an 
analogous combination marks the true artist in the sphere of 
the beautiful. Let us look at this more closely. We cannot 
analyse the art of the artist ; but we can analyse the art of 
the educator, and the analysis shows the fallacy that underlies 
the confounding of the two arts. I should say that sympathy 
is an intuitive perception of the mental condition and processes 
of others, so vivid as to enable a man, without effort, to live in 
and with other minds, and to help them on their way to 
knowledge and to character, by moving with them step by 
step. In every lesson which a man so endowed gives to the 
young, in every conversation he holds with them, this sym- 
pathetic intuition is unobtrusively active without any one being 
specially conscious of it. Now, this is a rare gift. I don't 
know how many teachers there are in Great Britain ; let us 
say, fifty thousand. How many of these, do you think, are 
so endowed by the grace of God ? Shall we say fifty ? Partially 
so endowed, there are thousands. 

Observe, now, what this sympathy is— the sympathy which 



64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

characterizes the teacher of whom we may say nascitur noti fit. 
It is simply a profound psychological knowledge, which yet 
is not knowledge at all, in any strict sense, because it is 
unconscious : it is rather to be called feeling or intuition. 
Were such a man suddenly gifted with the power and love 
of analytic and abstract thinking, he would, by his revelations, 
put our psychologists to shame. They would all go to school 
to him. 

Since such men are few and teachers are many, the question 
is, How are the many to rise to the level of the few ? I answer, 
In no way can they rise [to it ; but, by the conscious study of 
those very mental processes which the born teacher intuitively 
feels and instinctively practises, the vast majority may approach 
it. It is possible, in short, to become conscious of the art of 
education ; in other words, to know and apply to the work of 
education the philosophy or science of the mind of man : it 
is not possible to become a poet or a painter by studying the 
principles and philosophy of the arts of poetry or painting. 

Were I to ask you to analyse with me the inner processes of 
mind as it grows from childhood to manhood — those processes 
in and with which the educational genius instinctively lives — 
and then to formulate these, by what name would you call 
these formulated results? The "Philosophy of Mind," of 
course. Now, inasmuch as this philosophy of mind can be 
taught and learned, the secret of the sympathy of the educa- 
tional genius can so far be unveiled and learnt. Such study 
cannot make a man a genius, but it can put him on the next 
level to it, especially when supported by that strong desire to 
educate others which we assume to exist in all who choose the 
profession of schoolmaster. In this sense it is that, while I 
say of the rare schoolmaster-genius, nascitur, I say of all others, 
provided they have the humane prerequisite, they can be 
made — made in the likeness, and after the image, of him who 
is "born." 

What we desire, then, is that all young teachers should 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 6$ 

be helped to stand on the vantage-ground of wise and manly 
sympathy, by the study of the Philosophy of Mind. By this 
study, sympathetic teachers, in the strong virile sense, can be 
" made." And, once they are set on the right scientific road, 
every year will add to their knowledge, their skill, their wisdom ; 
in brief, their "sympathy," in the virile sense of the word. 

Now, let no young schoolmaster, freshly crowned with tripos 
laurels, think that, by posing as an opponent of philosophy in 
education and its consequent methods, he thereby makes good 
his own claim to the rare gift of genius. The world will not 
accept him at his own estimate, and will shrewdly conclude 
that, as the pretension to genius in a youth is often a claim to 
shirk hard work and do whatever the said youth pleases to do, 
the youthful schoolmaster who makes such pretensions must 
be watched. But if it should so happen that you, the young 
teacher, really have genius, depend on it, your genius will be 
strengthened and virilized by philosophy. In truth, it will be 
found that the man who is endowed with educational genius 
is always the last to oppose philosophy as part of the teacher's 
preparatory training. His very genius tells him that he has 
much to learn. Though conscious of his own strength, he 
yet cannot look behind him on the past abuse of young minds 
and bodies, around him on prevalent errors, and before him 
on the vast national interests involved, without feeling the 
necessity there is for that class of professional men and women 
who are set apart to work at the very foundations of the social 
fabric, studying their work in its principles, aims, and methods. 
The 86$a and individualism of pretentious minds must, he feels, 
be made to give way to the iTncrnjixr] of rational and reasoned 
system. 

Why should a young teacher not study philosophy as 
ground of his art? What are we afraid of? In other 
professions men study science and dwell with principles. It 
is possible in chemistry to be a very facile practical analyst 
with little knowledge of science, and yet you say to every 

L. L. K 



66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

young chemist, "Study the science of your art"; and you 
know that the genius-analysts have studied, and constantly do 
study, the science of the analytic art. So with engineers — 
especially genius-engineers. So with physicians, especially 
genius-physicians. The preacher, too, studies the science and 
history of theology ; why should he not be left to his mother- 
wit and the spasmodic visitations of spiritual inflation? It 
would appear that the onus of showing that a teacher should 
not, like other people, study the science of his special art lies 
with those who deny the necessity. Nowadays the cry is — 
Give technical instruction to our plumbers, and dyers, and 
weavers, and telegraphists, and mechanics of all sorts : and 
what does technical instruction mean ? It does not mean 
methods only, but the principles and history — i.e. the science — 
of the methods. Are teachers — the practisers of the art of 
forming the mind of the young — to be left out in the cold ? 
Are they not to aspire even to the technical preparation of a 
plumber ? In the case of schoolmasters alone, are we to 
reverse the thought of the poet, spoil the scanning, and say — 

M agister 
Infelix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas? 

Let us look, for a little, at some of the current objections : — 
" Will the student of philosophy be a better teacher," some 
say, "by virtue of his study?" I answer, more Scotico, by 
asking another question : " Will a plumber be a better plumber, 
a chemical analyst a better analyst, by studying the science of 
their respective arts ? " This, at least, all must allow to be 
absolutely certain : the teacher himself will be placed on a 
higher plane of professional life by the study of philosophy. 
By being more, and thinking more, as a man, he will be more 
and think more in his daily work. It is a truism, " As is the 
teacher, so is the school": I would add, "As is the man, so is 
the teacher." 

But, again, some say : " By making him study the science 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 67 

of mind as it bears on the educating of mind, you will destroy 
a teacher's originality ! " Now, if there be a philosophy or 
science underlying all educational procedure, that youth must 
indeed have a weakling and rickety originality who cannot bear 
to look at this philosophy without being turned to stone, as if 
he gazed on a Medusa's head. Had such originality not better 
die at once and have done with it ? 

Again, I have found that some fear that the study of the 
philosophy of education, and the consequent art, may make 
young men pedants before their time. Now, I can easily 
understand how the study of methods alone — dogmatic rules of 
procedure — may make a man a pedant who is by nature already 
pedantically disposed ; but, even then, his pedantry, like 
Hamlet's (so-called) madness, will have method in it, which will 
be something gained. But the philosophy of mind, which 
determines all methods, and gives them truth, meaning, vitality, 
is the enemy and destroyer of pedantry. For what is it, after 
all, save thinking? Can a teacher be converted into a pedant by 
thinking about the foundations and ultimate significance of what 
he holds to be an Art — his Art ? Those headmasters who are, 
by the grace of God, themselves the whole art of education 
incarnate, need not surely fear a young assistant because he 
thinks. It is only despots to whom " such men are dangerous " : 
it is only they that love the "sleek smooth head." 

"Well, but after all, in a schoolmaster, if you have not 
genius, then experience is everything," we are further told. On 
the contrary, experience is nothing — often less than nothing : 
it is a mere opportunity for further confirming bad habits of 
mind. Experience is the great indurator, the crust-former, of 
the human soul. I wish some clever fellow would write a 
paper "On the Futility of Experience, especially among 
Schoolmasters." " Days should speak, and multitude of years 
should teach wisdom," we are told in Job. You notice the 
" should " — a wisely chosen mood ; for experience no more 
gives wisdom than facts make history. There is no department 

5—2 



68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

of life in which experience is of value, except to him whose 
prior philosophic or scientific discipline enables him to put the 
right questions to experience and interpret the answers. 

It was only the other day — I hope we may regard the day 
as past — that secondary schoolmasters looked with suspicion, 
even contempt, on the study of methods, and regarded every 
man who talked of methods as a "mere theorist." There may 
be survivals ; but it must be difficult now, I hope, to find the 
headmaster who would think it a disqualification in a young 
teacher of language to have studied Quintilian and Ascham. 
The battle of methods is now won in the whole field of primary 
education, and in every department of science-teaching ; and it 
is only among secondary schoolmasters, literary, linguistic, and 
classical, that the heresy still prevails, that every graduate, when 
he puts on his hood, puts on with it the whole art of education ; 
that when we endue a raw youth with an academic gown, we 
endow him with method. But even with this class of teacher 
great progress has been made. He recognizes at least that 
there is such a thing as method. The primary school has 
taught this to the secondary school. Comenius and Pestalozzi 
have also taken possession of the science chairs of our univer- 
sities. It is otherwise, however, with the philosophy of mind 
as the basis of all methods and as alone vindicating the truth 
of methods, and furnishing aim and inspiration as well as plan. 
This is still fighting its way up. Surely, if there be methods — 
rules, ways of procedure in teaching and training — there must 
be a philosophy of them, and that philosophy must be the 
philosophy of mind. Not psychology alone in its narrower and 
more empirical sense ; but the philosophy of mind, and, 
therefore, the philosophy of man. As with methods, so with 
philosophic principles ; the movement to give the latter a place 
has begun in primary schools. The Government of the country 
already examines in principles (in a fashion) — a great victory 
for the once abused " theorist." The Department now writes 
instructions to inspectors with all the unction of a Professor of 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 69 

the Theory and Art of Education. Are secondary school- 
masters alone supra philosophiam ? Are they all born 
philosophers as well as born artists ? What elixir of educa- 
tional genius do Greek iambics or the mathematics of the fourth 
dimension distil? 

In speaking of method, I have said that I presume no 
headmaster would nowadays object to a young graduate who 
had been sufficiently in earnest about his profession to study 
Quintilian and Ascham. So now, may I be so daring as to say, 
that no headmaster (under forty) would think the worse of a 
young graduate if he had studied such a book in the philosophy 
of education as, for example, Mr R. L. Nettleship's " Exposi- 
tion of the Republic of Plato " ? That most admirable of all 
modern treatises on the philosophy of education — modern, but 
resting deep on ancient foundations — is buried in the volume 
called Hellenica 1 . But I would warn the rule-of-thumb empiri- 
cists — the would-be born educators — the artists by the grace of 
God — to put it on an Index Expurgatorius ; for it will make a 
youth think, it will make him " theorize." But in a classical 
school, at least, a young master who engages himself with Plato 
can hardly be treated as a suspect. I say with confidence, that 
if a clever young graduate who has been teaching for a year or 
two without thinking much about the great question of educa- 
tion, will shut himself up for a week with Nettleship's essay, he 
will come out into his school afterwards (to use the phraseology 
in which our Scottish Calvinistic fathers brought us up) con- 
victed, converted, regenerate, sanctified. A new sun will be 
shining by day, and a new moon by night. As a teacher, he 
will live henceforth in the atmosphere breathed by the minor 
gods. 

But a more serious objection has to be encountered. 

There is an art : there is method : there are methods, all now 

admit; but some would foreclose all further discussion by 

saying there is no science of the art, no accepted philosophy 

1 Since reprinted in Nettleship's Remains. 



70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

of mind in its relation to education as a whole ; and, accord- 
ingly, we must adjourn till we have settled this. 

Let me admit that there is no one philosophy of education 
which is above suspicion — no recognized philosophic educa- 
tional system or theory : what then ? Is there any philosophy 
of which it can be said that it is recognized and final ? — and 
yet we pursue philosophy as a part of general academic 
education. It is not necessary to have a philosophy of 
education as unquestionable as Euclid before we can, as 
teachers, be asked to study it. Sir Frederick Pollock, in his 
" Introduction to Political Science " (by-the-by, I might ask 
students of Politics, and of Political Economy too, who doubt 
the science of education, where their " science " is to be found), 
says : " It is better to have a theory of education not exactly in 
the right place, than to have none at all ; which last is about 
the condition in which we moderns have been since the tradition 
of the Renaissance sank into an unintelligent routine." To dis- 
cuss actual or possible educational philosophies here would be 
impossible, and I will content myself with saying that Aristotle's 
" Ethics," though wanting in direct guidance for the trainer of 
youth, is a science of the art of moral education from the 
Hellenic standpoint ; Plato's " Republic," again, is a philosophy 
or science of education in a much larger and wider and pro- 
founder national sense. Does anyone who has studied these 
books doubt this? I avoid modern instances, lest I should 
arouse the jealousies of the "Schools." The philosophy of 1 
education is simply the groundwork of the art, as that ground- 
work is to be found in the nature of the mind of man, the ends 
of man's existence, and his relations to other men. It is, in 
short, what we mean by philosophy — philosophy in its grand 
historical sense, " musical as is Apollo's lute " ; but it is, also 
and chiefly, this philosophy in its special relation to the growth 
of the man-child to manhood. The philosophy or science of 
education is, moreover, the philosophy of mind and of man as a 
growing mind and a. growing man : it is dynamical, not a barren 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 71 

analysis and formulation of the statical facts of the human mind 
abstracted from life and the conditions of life. And yet, though 
this way of looking at mind does not appear in the " Ethics " 
of Aristotle, and only partially in the " Republic " of Plato, 
I confidently ask any young teacher who has studied these 
books, especially Nettleship's exposition of the latter, "Have 
they anything to do with you and the social function to which 
you have devoted your life ? " I know the answer will be : 
" They have everything to do with me ; just as much as Greek 
accidence and syntax have to do with the teaching of Greek." 
Taste, then, and eat ; it is not the fruit of the forbidden tree, 
though it does teach the knowledge of good and evil. 

Now, those who allow me to name the two books which I 
have called to witness as philosophies of the art of education, 
and make no protest, are in my net of argument. This is all 
I want. I suppose they will scarcely say philosophy ended 
with Plato and Aristotle ; that thought on the supreme subjects 
of human concern— man's life, man's destiny, and man's 
education for his life and destiny — was arrested about 322 years 
B.C. The philosophy of education, then, exists, and by your 
own admission should be studied as a preparation for your pro- 
fessional work. 

So much for philosophy in general, and its bearing on the 
great art of education ; but, it may be urged (for there is no 
end to the objections to the existence of colour which a man 
born blind may urge), " such philosophy, though always 
instructive and stimulating, cannot give birth, by necessary, 
or even probable, deduction, to methods of instruction and 
methods of moral training — to the ' rules ' of the teacher's art, 
in short ; and so it becomes part of a man's liberal culture 
merely, as opposed to his professional preparation for the work 
of life." This depends very much on what is meant by 
the objector : such philosophies give you end and aim ; the 
principles which you have imbibed from them are translated 
into practice by you, spite of yourself; and they cannot be 



J2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

translated into practice without going through the intermediate 
stage of rules or methods — the axiomata media which govern 
practical life. As principial they determine rules. These 
rules and methods you may (it is true) be only vaguely 
conscious of, because of your idle habit of not thinking things 
out ; but they are always there in your mind, always operative, 
always potent. To the extent to which a man might formulate 
them, to that extent would he at once see that the rules and 
methods were deductions from principles. As Wordsworth 
says in the " Prelude " — 

" General truths which are themselves a sort 
Of elements and agents, under-powers, 
Subordinate helpers of the living mind." 

— But I would meet the objection more in the face. 

I have been speaking of philosophy in its larger sense as 
a philosophy of life, and, as such, supremely practical. The 
claim of philosophy on the teacher becomes irresistible when 
we see that, within the philosophy of life and mind, there falls 
not only the analysis of the processes of Intelligence, but the 
successive movements involved in building up Conscience and 
disciplining to Duty. This is a chapter of the larger Bible of 
philosophy. Omitting the moral aspects of psychology and 
confining myself to the intelligence alone, whereby it is mainly 
that a man differs from the beasts of the field, I would sum up, 
in a brief paragraph, much that might be said more convinc- 
ingly perhaps if dealt with at greater length, hoping that, in 
being concise, I do not become obscure, viz. : The process 
whereby intelligence intelligizes is the process by which a man 
knows and can alone know. He cannot know anything through 
his fingers or toes, or in any other way than by a movement 
within him which is as definite and determined in its character 
as are the laws of the physical world. Knowing is only another 
word for learning ; and does it not follow, by necessary con- 
sequence, that the way of learning must be the way of teaching ? 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 73 

This question answers itself. Now, what is the meaning of 
the word " method " ? It simply means Way — neither more 
nor less. The way of learning, then, is the method of teaching. 
Let any man escape from that brief argument if he can. 

The general method (or methodick or methodology) yielded 
by psychology applies to all subjects equally — to English, 
Science, Greek, Music, etc., to the extent to which the subject 
permits. An analysis of it breaks it up into many sub-processes 
which we call methods in the plural number — in other words, 
rules of the art of instruction and of moral education. 

Now, /you cannot, by any device, escape method. Admit 
that method is a way and that methods are ways, and I defy 
any man to teach without them. No man ever did so. As 
Aristotle says, there is no question as to philosophizing or not ; 
a man, simply because he is a man, jnust philosophize. So we 
educationalists say, it is not at all a question whether a teacher 
is to teach by method or not : he must teach, by the very nature 
of things, according to some way or method. The questions 
are : Do we philosophize wisely ? Do we instruct according 
to a wise method ? Do not imagine that you can ever escape 
method of some sort. When you teach amo, amavi, or chemical 
processes, or Sophocles, or the pons asinorum, you are always 
following a way ; you must follow a way. You are devotees 
of method without knowing it. But what method ? What way ? 

Let me assume here, however, that you have deliberately 
studied methods. My point is that the student of methods 
should carry his studies a step further back, and see method 
growing out of psychology as part of the larger and presiding 
philosophy. Still, I can imagine a young teacher of ingenuous 
mind hesitating. Methods he may frankly recognize ; and he 
may admit also that as part of general culture, quite apart from 
scholastic duty, a man should study philosophy in the large 
Platonic sense, because philosophy, so understood, is after all 
only an explanation of the meaning of man and his cosmic 
function — an inquiry into the ends of human existence. An 



74 T HE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

educator, above all men, he may admit, should think of these 
things. But when it comes to the connecting together of 
philosophy, psychology, and methods by a rational link, he 
shrinks back lest he should become a bond-slave of law and 
rule. " I fear I should no longer be a free man," he may say ; 
" I should be a mere instrument of science, — a walking for- 
mula." Well, it is so far true. You would not be free to do 
many things you now do ; your will — which is not will at all, 
as philosophy would teach you, but arbitrary caprice — would 
be under the restraint of law. To the extent to which any of 
us is educated we part with our freedom in the banal sense of 
the word. As sons of God we are under law, which alone is 
the true freedom of the human spirit. The law against which 
you, as an individual, rebel, has been called " the glorious liberty 
of the children of God." Does any man quarrel with this? 
Does he desire to throw off the restraint of the law which alone 
is true freedom? So with \ the educator when he studies the 
science of his art, therein to find law. 

Let me console you, however, with the assurance, that it 
is a complete misconception to suppose that, when you have 
/studied either methods or their scientific bases, you are con- 
stantly thinking of these things and squaring your mode of 
instruction with them. A practical engineer, when he is doing 
his daily task, is not revolving in his mind the whole theory 
of mechanics ; a chemist who is engaged on a particular inves- 
tigation is not reproducing in imagination the whole theory 
of chemistry from hour to hour ; a clergyman, when he is 
addressing an audience hungry for spiritual food, is not conning 
in his inner consciousness a whole scheme of scientific theology. 
So with the teacher : methods and philosophy he has studied 
and is always thinking about, more or less, with the larger 
thought of cultivated men everywhere ; but, in his converse 
with his pupils, these things do not obtrude themselves. They 
have already shaped his mind to his work at the first; they 
have given the primary impulse, and from day to day continue 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 75 

to give body and substance to an enthusiasm which would be 
otherwise thin and effervescent ; they have deepened his profes- 
sional mind and enriched it: the fruits of his study are alone in 
evidence. The higher aim, the deepened conviction, the richer 
professional endowment, are all there. A large and virile con- 
ception of his work ennobles both the work and himself. 
Philosophy is not a stagnant pool, but a well of living water. 
Even of methods we say with confidence that a teacher who 
has wisely studied them is the master of methods ; methods 
are not his master. But if there be a real danger here in the 
sphere of method or rule, I provide the remedy when I say, 
"Study philosophy, which gives rational freedom." As to the 
teacher who trusts to the externalities of tradition or to the 
wilful individualism which he flatters himself is originality and 
genius, is not he a slave — the slave of past dead forms and of 
his own unreasoned opinions ? The student of method, going 
farther, and seeing his instruction-methods in the light of 
psychology, and his whole educational function in the light of 
philosophy, becomes objective and universal, thus entering into 
the whole kingdom of liberty. He is a servant, not a slave./ 
He is an academic gentleman. He moves with an easy 
confidence in the discharge of his daily duties — a confidence 
which thought on the fundamental principles of an art always 
gives to the practical worker. He, last and least of all men, 
is a mere walking formula. It is among the unthinking and 
opinionative that you must look for the formulated man — the 
scholastic pedant, the prig, and the dominie. 

Before I conclude, I should like, by way of illustration, to 
take an example of one or two philosophic utterances in the 
sphere of moral education of a very simple and obvious kind : 
I What we have to aim at is the happiness of each citizen, and 
happiness consists in a complete activity and practice of virtue." 
Again : " The soul consists of two parts — Reason in itself, and 
the lower nature which is capable of receiving the rule of 



76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 

Reason." From these pregnant words of Aristotle one could 
deduce a good deal of the moral philosophy of education. 
Does it not become the young teacher to read such utterances 
and to study what may help him to solve the problem which 
Aristotle little more than states? 

"Again," says Aristotle, "education should be regulated 
by the State for the ends of the State, and each citizen should 
understand that he is not his own master, but a part of the 
State." Large and complex educational questions, ethical and 
practical, are suggested here. Are they not questions for the 
educational profession? To what extent, now, do you con- 
sciously educate your boys to be " part of the State " ? What, 
I ask you, is the modern meaning, the social significance, of 
this phrase? Does it not concern educators, above all other 
men, to think about these things? Let me assure you that, 
without the habit of thinking on the general philosophy of 
education, your thought on this particular question will be 
worthless — utterly worthless. 

Now, does it not become the secondary teachers of the 
country to put themselves in evidence on this subject, and to 
claim for the philosophy of education a place in the academic 
system, so that all young teachers should have in the universities 
an opportunity (at least) of studying the meaning of their future 
life-work? So long ago as 1865 Mark Pattison wrote, "The 
first condition of a good teacher is that he shall be a teacher 
and nothing else, that he shall be i?-ained as a teacher and not 
brought up to serve other professions." Is the teacher's pro- 
fession the only one that has no principles, no history — in 
brief, no scientific basis, no method resting on principles ? If 
this be truly so, why do teachers talk, and sometimes grumble, 
about status and social position ? They have no claim to either 
one or the other. What value has the teaching of a little Latin 
and less Greek in the estimate of sensible men of affairs ? These 
subjects ought to be regarded as merely the raw material 
whereby the teacher discharges his educational and ethical 



AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 77 

functions ; and for these functions he has to be trained. A 
teacher is a practical philosopher, or he is of little account. 

Why is it, then, that the great body of secondary school- 
masters are yet unconvinced that a part of their necessary 
preparation for their work should be the study of philosophy — 
at least in so far as it bears on education ? I have already 
indicated why, and I will say it more explicitly now. It is 
because they have not yet risen to the level of their work ; they 
have not yet discovered their true function in the community. 
They insist, in accordance with a bad tradition, on regarding 
themselves simply as teachers of this or that subject — English 
or Mathematics or Latin, as the case may be. For this a 
totally different idea of their function has to be substituted and 
firmly grasped ; and that idea is that they are not teachers of 
subjects primarily at all, but teachers of minds by means of 
subjects. ] When they fully realize that they teach minds, they 
will at once see that they are bound to study Mind. 

I end as I began — Sound theory is sound practice become 
conscious of itself; and every schoolmaster who would also be 
an educator should be conscious of the art he practises, so that 
he who is not born, or only, it may be, half-born, may, through 
that scientific consciousness, be made, and that he who is born 
may have his consciousness enlightened and fortified. 

In conclusion, it is scarcely necessary to remind an audience 
such as this, that (the art of the teacher, properly understood 
as (fhe art of the educator, is a great art, the greatest and most 
difficult of all arts — mind fashioning mind. Is there any art 
like it — any which can so attract the finer spirits among men, 
any which can so engage in its service that enthusiasm which 
fills the moral atmosphere to-day? Is there any, the wise 
practice of which brings such personal reward, strengthening 
from day to day the spirit of him who gives and him who takes, 
laying up for a man a store of peaceful days when, the struggle 
of life being past, he comes to cast the inevitable retrospect — 



78 PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

not wholly satisfactory, I imagine, for even the best of us? 
Surely an art so great, so full of great issues for the individual 
and for society, is worth thinking about — is worth thinking 
about in its principles, its rules, its history, its aims — in brief, 
its philosophy. After all, what is it I demand ? Merely that 
fthe young teacher, before he has hardened down, should read, 
observe, and think about his vocation, and that all universities 
should provide the necessary aid in this as in other matters — 
merely this and no more. Plato thought the subject worth 
thinking about. So did Aristotle, and Cato, and Quintilian, 
and Comenius, and Kant, and Locke, and Rousseau, and 
Herbart. <Do not leave education as a philosophy to the 
philosophers alone. Claim it as, in a special sense, your subject, 
at once the inspirer of your lives and the science of your art. 



79 



IV. 



THE SCHOOLMASTER AND UNIVERSITY (DAY) 
TRAINING COLLEGES IN ENGLAND'. 

When, owing to very numerous occupations, I was about to 
decline the honour of your invitation to address you on this 
occasion, Professor MacCunn recalled to my mind the fact that 
I had a good deal to do with originating the idea of Day 
Training Colleges in connection with universities — that I had 
been, as we say in Scotland, "at the biggin o't." Accordingly, 
I put aside other engagements, and resolved to put on paper 
a few observations which might pass, in the lenient judgment 
of friends, as an inauguration address. 

First, let me say that it was from no feeling of hostility to 
residential training colleges that university day training colleges 
were advocated. That, I think, is now distinctly understood. 
The simple fact was that a large percentage of teachers in 
England were untrained, and more facilities for training were 
wanted. 

We have now a great organization of the resources of the 
country in the interests of the education of the people. Money 
and time are given to the work to an extent which would have 
been considered, forty years ago, an impossibility. The very 
conception of such a system as we now have would have been 

1 Inaugural Address delivered at the Liverpool University College, on 
the occasion of starting the " Day Training College." 



80 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

ridiculed as the dream of a " theorist." Many of us here can 
remember the day when two millions of children of school age 
in England, out of a total population of about twenty millions, 
were "neither at school nor at work." Add those at work 
who had received no schooling, and you can then imagine the 
educational destitution of the country. Now all is changed ; 
and, with the change, the education question, always with us, 
and always to be with us, alters its form. Two questions are 
now, I think, to the front — local autonomy, and the higher 
training of the teacher. Centralization has done its work, and 
decentralization (subject, of course, to central control of a 
general kind) is now necessary, if we are to engage the intellect 
and moral energy of the country more fully in the work of 
education. This point, however, I shall for the present pass 
by, for there is a more vital question than decentralization that 
demands our attention here and now ; and this question con- 
cerns the inner agencies by which we are to work the organization 
we at last, after a long contest, happily possess. 

The central motive power of the whole scholastic machine 
is, by general consent, the teacher ; on him, his ideals, his 
character, his method, his living activity, all depends. Where 
he is weak the organization is worthless, and precisely as he isl 
effective, so is the organization effective. Hence the necessity 
for more, and more highly trained, men and women. It was 
quite natural that attention should be directed to the university 
colleges springing up over England as the best available agency 
for adding to the number and the quality of the trained, 
especially as Board schools were as undenominational in their 
character as these colleges themselves. It was essential, more- 
over, in their own interests, that these young colleges should 
educate for the professions if they were to succeed in attracting 
pupils. The medical profession was open to them, and it was 
also open to them so to organize their scheme of studies as to 
give business men a more liberal education than was common 
in commercial circles. It still, however, remained for them to 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 8 1 

constitute themselves professional schools for teachers ; and, 
doubtless, we shall one day find them attracting apprentice 
solicitors by organizing a law faculty, and perhaps also ap- 
prentice clergymen by organizing a faculty of theology embracing 
those subjects which the Churches can leave to independent 
teaching. The immediate and pressing work ready to their 
hand was, however, unquestionably training for the teaching 
profession ; and this, thanks to the liberal views of Sir W. 
Hart Dyke and Mr Kekewich, they are now trying to do. 

It would be ungracious on this occasion not to name the 
vice-president and the permanent secretary. I have had a long 
experience of Government officials, and I know that much 
depends on the mental attitude of the central authority as 
represented by them. If they have in view merely the working 
of "articles" in a legal and bureaucratic spirit instead of using 
the code as an instrument to promote the local efforts being 
made by earnest men in every part of the kingdom to advance 
education, they may obstruct all progress and stamp out the 
most fruitful ideas. Codes may be so constructed and ad- 
ministered as to help forward education, and they may also be 
so constructed and administered that every article is a trap for 
the unwary and an obstacle to the zealous. The institutions, 
whether university colleges like this or residential training 
colleges, which are doing the work of the State in preparing 
schoolmasters, specially merit, I think, not only the recognition 
which they have already secured from the Department, but the 
most generous consideration and the most liberal treatment. 
Every article in the code should be strained in their favour, not 
against them. The question for the Department should not 
be how little can we give, but rather how much can we give to 
promote the better education of the men and women who are 
to work the national system. Its chief duty is to see that the 
training given is liberal and generous in the spiritual sense, as 
justification for their being liberal and generous in the material 
sense. 

l. l. 6 



82 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

The two reasons we have assigned for the university training 
college are the reasons we give to the politician, and they are 
true and sufficient reasons ; but there is a large idea in the 
movement which, though not purposely concealed, it is not 
always expedient to blazon on its front. It is difficult to get 
even academic men to take action in service of an idea. Ideas 
are suspects. The practical politician and the routine adminis- 
trator would gladly arrest them as vagrants having no visible 
means of subsistence, and put them in gaol to be reduced by 
spare diet till they died of inanition. And there is, after all, 
some justification for their line of action. An idea must be 
shown to be practicable before it can be allowed to enter into 
an administrative system ; and we are well content, accordingly, 
to have the official mind open to accept ideas when their 
practicability can be shown. In England, however, it is always 
wise to put some purely practical purpose in the front, and keep 
the idea and larger meaning of a movement in the background. 
The most important movement in our time, for example, next 
to the training of the teacher, is the more advanced instruction 
of members of trade unions— the aristocracy of the wage-earning 
class. What the educationalist chiefly aims at is elevating the 
plane of the mental life of the operative class, giving occupation 
for their leisure, and a higher aim to their politics. If we wish 
to succeed, we must demand the "technical instruction" of the 
working-man. That is the phrase to conjure with ; and there 
is enough of reality and substance in the demand to justify us 
in joining in it. If the desire be to educate the lower middle 
class, and provide good secondary commercial schools, the edu- 
cationalist, while, to save his honesty, not committing himself, 
will yet not exert himself to check the panic about the German 
invasion of clerks, although he knows very well that the German 
can afford to take a salary which an Englishman, who has been 
trained to write a foreign language, would certainly despise. 
The German is here to be trained in English commerce. 
He is, in truth, attending the great mercantile university 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 83 

called " Great Britain," and, like other students of universities, 
he takes his reward out, not in salary but in knowledge, and 
in growing familiarity with the world-language — the Volapuk 
— of trade. 

In like manner, while there are solid practical reasons, 
such as I have given above, for the institution of university 
training colleges — solid and practical enough to justify the 
action taken by the Education Department — it is a purely 
educational purpose which can alone engage professional in- 
terest in the new movement. Let me put before you briefly 
what I conceive this purpose to be. 

1. The university colleges are at present confessedly training 
for primary schools. This is a work which, with slight adapta- 
tions of their academic machinery, they are well fitted to do ; 
but, ere many years have elapsed, their principal work will 
be, I believe, the preparation of teachers for higher-grade 
elementary schools and for secondary schools. We prefer 
university institutions for the training of every grade of teacher 
to specialized training colleges, simply because they are not 
specialized 1 . It is only in exceptional circumstances, and 
under men of exceptional ability, that a seminary restricted to 
one profession can do the best work for that profession. There 
is, in truth, a radical error in the conception of an exclusive 
seminary for the education of members of a profession. 
(Teachers, least of all, should be set apart from their fellow- 
citizens prematurely. They should breathe the invigorating air 
of an institution where all manner of men meet. There they 
come in daily contact with a larger life and with more varied 
intellectual interests than can possibly exist in a specialist school 
that limits its scope by the horizon of examination papers 
imposed by outside authority, and subordinates everything to 
a practical aim which prescribes "thus far and no farther." 

1 We have overcome the educational difficulty in Scotland by utilizing 
the universities for all training college students who are fit to attend 
them. 



84 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

Contact with other men pursuing diverse studies, even when 
unaided by any other influence, counteracts the tendency to 
narrowness and pedantry, by giving breadth to the student's 
mind : this is itself an education. The scholastic pedant will 
not, I am aware, concur, for he can see no gain to the human 
mind except in precise and exact knowledge of this or that 
subject : he ignores the educational influence of the imagination 
and of the indefinite. 

2. Again, in universities young teachers are brought into 
relation with experts in all departments of knowledge, and this 
raises their standard of what it is to know any subject. They 
leave with their testamur in their pockets, but well aware that 
it is a testamur of ignorance and not of learning. They have 
learned the lesson of humility. In the ordinary seminarist 
students we too commonly find that they cease studying after 
they leave college ; their knowledge is rounded off : their 
ignorance is their bliss. In the university-trained man his 
ignorance is his misery, and stimulates to further effort. He 
has a want which can never be satisfied. Thus, living and 
progressive minds are sent into our schools, to the great gain 
of the community ; for the teacher who is not always learning 
is a bad teacher, however skilfully he may produce certain 
"results." He fails to give stimulus, and the intellectual 
outlook and imagination of the pupil lie dead under him. 

3. Further, the university-trained schoolmaster imbibes 
some of the scientific spirit of the university, and goes forth 
as a scientific worker, and not as a mere craftsman. He has 
presumably studied the philosophy of his art, and works always 
with a dignified consciousness of his scientific function. He 
goes out to teach, that by teaching he may, in the largest sense, 
educate. 

4. Finally, if he stays long enough to graduate, the young 
teacher goes forth as a member of an academic brotherhood. 
This gives him his standard of life and his code of manners 
and intercourse, by making him a conscious sharer in a 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 85 

corporate self-respect. He thus, by his academic standing, 
strengthens the body of teachers, as a guild having rights to 
exact from the community as well as owing duties to it. 

These characteristics of the university man are, it is to be 
confessed, not always present in the youths whom universities 
turn out ; but it is only universities that produce them. When 
they are present in a schoolmaster, he cannot keep them out 
of the influence he exercises, for they constitute him ; and as 
is the man so is the teacher. It is the influence of the 
universities and the Church on the culture and status of the 
schoolmaster which has kept our great public schools up to 
their present level as educational institutions ; and if only the 
scholarly men who work in these schools were also professionally 
trained, we should see great things. 

There are many initial difficulties, financial and other, which 
beset a new departure such as the University Training College, 
and it is precisely to those most closely connected with it that 
the results will often seem most disappointing. But, in truth, 
the new idea is itself accomplishing much more than appears 
on the surface. In all university work the teachers have 
a tendency to feel despondent because of the small apparent 
output as represented by the new-fledged graduates who leave 
their hands. This is as if a gardener were to feel hopeless 
about the crop the day after he had sown the seed. The 
flower and fruit will come in due time. In contact with the 
duties of life the raw graduate develops with amazing rapidity. 

While trusting thus largely to the general influences of 
a liberal education and of academic life, the university training 
colleges have, generously and of set purpose, to do their part ; 
they have to remember that they are training to a profession. 
The broad and various university interests are necessary to the 
growth of the student ; but there must also be the definite aim. 
So far from weakening, unity of aim strengthens and deepens 
the impression which studies make, because unity of aim gives 



86 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

moral purpose. It is a vulgar error to suppose that knowledge 
which is pursued for its own sake is alone liberalizing. Is it 
not rather the case that what is studied with a view to its being 
turned to use among our fellow-men exalts pursuits otherwise 
abstract and unattractive, and throws over them a certain 
emotional glow ? Use, and the purpose of use, alone give life 
and meaning to the abstract. It is the ultimate use to which 
they are to be applied that gives unity as well as life to the 
diverse studies and influences of the university. Nay, may we 
not say that, of all knowledge, use is at once the consecration 
and the criticism ? 

In the case of the schoolmaster, then, all the knowledge 
acquired in college must contemplate one issue — the qualifica- 
tion to teach and -to educate. For this, as all admit, a practising 
school and a master of method are essential; but, over and 
above, there is needed the scientific study of education under 
a master who has graduated in the philosophy of the human 
mind. If there be not this, then assuredly the specific university 
training of the teacher is non-existent. It is scientific or philo- 
sophic preparation for a profession that can alone liberalize 
it. It is an historical blunder to suppose that " liberal " educa- 
tion ever meant the pursuit of subjects divorced from the needs 
of practical life. Aries liberates were first so called by way of 
contrast to the mechanical and industrial arts. The study of 
philosophy and history in their educational relations should, 
accordingly, take its place as one of the subjects qualifying for 
an Arts degree. 

It is only by calling to mind a few great individuals that 
we can be proud of our profession. Isocrates, Quintilian, 
Vittorino da Feltre, Neander, Sturm, Comenius, Pestalozzi, 
Arnold, and so forth, soon exhaust our list. On the whole, we 
can look back on a past mainly ignoble, and on generations of 
boys who have learned what they have learned spite of their 
masters. The Orbilius plagosus, the pedant, the dominie, the 
brutal despot, fill the eye. The classical epithets are scevus, 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 87 

acerbus, sceleratus ; and Martial speaks of the schoolmaster as 
invisum pueris virginibusque caput. If we are now to reconstitute 
the profession by giving to each member all that is best in the 
past, as illuminated and organized by modern thought, we must, 
I say, lay our foundations in history and philosophy. A Chair 
of Education, then, is to my mind an essential part of the 
university training college. A mere practical master of method 
will not suffice, nor even a Lecturer holding a subordinate 
place in the academic organization. The Arts faculty must be 
augmented by the addition of a Professor whose subjects shall 
be mind as a groivt/i and the history of attempts to educate 
mind. In brief, education as a science or philosophy must be 
taught. Without philosophy, the best teacher is merely a clever 
craftsman. If the universities are unable to appoint a Professor 
of Education for want of money, why should not the Education 
Department extend a liberal hand? Failing the Department, 
why should not the County Councils of Liverpool and Lanca- 
shire step in and pay the salaries both of masters of method 
and professors of education, as I suggested at Manchester last 
September ? The work in which these men are to be engaged 
is the highest kind of "technical" work, and seems to be covered 
by the English Technical School Acts ; or, at least, not pro- 
hibited by them. If the County Council of Cambridgeshire can 
offer money to the university to teach agriculture and teachers 
of agriculture, why not to teach teaching and teachers generally? 
Again, to attain the results which we hope for from our 
university training colleges, the authorities must be careful in 
selecting the material which they undertake to train. I think 
that you may (as, indeed, some colleges are now doing) supervise 
and direct the training of those who are fit to benefit only 
partially by an academic course, and be content to carry them 
forward to the " intermediate " examination ; but work of this 
kind must always, to a large extent, lie outside an academic 
organization. Your main object should be to attract those 
among pupil-teachers and the rest of the community who, 
having passed a university preliminary examination, can be 



88 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

carried forward to their full degree, the philosophy, history, 
and art of education being included (as I have already 
indicated) as one of the subjects qualifying for that degree. 
These graduate-teachers would naturally aim at higher-grade 
elementary institutions ; and the day would soon arrive when 
none save a graduate would be considered eligible to a head- 
mastership in all the more important State-aided schools. This 
surely would be to render a great public service to England; 
and it is this which university colleges and universities are alone 
qualified to render. 

Whatever may be the difficulties, financial and other, that 
attend the new movement, a good time is at hand. Secondary 
schoolmasters, as well as primary, will have to be trained. 
A Teachers' Registration Act will quickly fill your halls. 
When I was examined on this subject last spring by the 
Parliamentary Committee, it was evident that the vice-president 
of the Council and others were concerned about the means of 
getting professional training for the large numbers of young 
men and women who would have to seek it after the passing 
of an Act. I pointed to the universities and their colleges. 
These institutions now provide all our legitimate secondary 
school teachers. If they can do this, they can also give them 
their professional training, drawing into their net, moreover, 
those who now open schools at their own venture, often with 
dubious qualification. It would be a great mistake to have 
separate training colleges for secondary schoolmasters. It would 
be hurtful in itself and a waste of existing resources. There 
are now already in England and Wales some thirteen or 
fourteen institutions ready to do the work which the State, by 
passing a Registration Act, would demand to have done 
somehow. The State, by thus utilizing the higher educational 
institutions which it already recognizes, would get its secondary 
schoolmasters at a very cheap rate, while contributing by the 
increased number of students to the financial prosperity and 
the national importance of all the provincial colleges. The 
passing of a Registration Act, then, is your opportunity. 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 89 

As there are some vague ideas abroad as to the course of 
instruction for secondary schoolmasters, I should like to take 
this opportunity of giving some indication of the lines on which 
it would naturally proceed. During their graduation course 
they should, if possible, take a term of logic and elementary 
psychology, and then attend for two terms (followed by exami- 
nation) the lectures of the professor of education, whose 
instruction would cover the field of the philosophy of mind, 
history, and methodology. After graduating in the department 
of knowledge which they intended to profess as teachers (the 
psychological and educational studies being included in these 
degree qualifications), they would then spend one term under 
the general superintendence of the professor and the special 
direction of the master of method in a practising school — some 
good higher-grade elementary school in the university town. 
In that school they would see teaching and themselves teach. 
Demonstration lessons would be given in their presence, and 
they would also be carried through a course of criticism lessons. 
A second term would be spent in some good secondary 
school — the criticism lessons still continuing. If distributed, 
these student-teachers would not injure the work of the schools 
in which they taught, but, on the contrary, stimulate it. Having 
already passed an examination in principles, history, and 
methods when taking their degree, they would conclude their 
course by teaching a class before the professor and some other 
examiner, and so finally qualify for a license or diploma which 
the Registration Council and the State would, of course, 
recognize. All this could be carried on under a university 
syndicate for the training of teachers — such as already exists at 
Cambridge and here. The licensed graduates would then — 
and only then — be entitled to say that they were members 
not only of an academic body (as at present), but also of 
a great profession. Certain public schools in various parts 
of the country should be thrown open to these licentiates 
for visitation, and they would do well to spend a couple of 



90 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

months in thus laying a broad basis of experience for their 
future. 

The most important agency in training the teacher, whether 
primary or secondary, in the practice of his art as distinct from 
the theory and history of education, is the criticism lesson to 
which I have adverted above. As the criticism lesson is not 
fully understood outside training colleges, I may say a word or 
two about it : — The student is required to prepare a lesson to 
be taught by him to a certain class at a certain stage of progress. 
This he does in the presence of his fellow-students, who take 
notes, and after he has finished, criticise. But it is not desirable 
to give them license in criticism, and, with a view to point and 
relevancy, they should have guidance. A very good specimen 
of the rules which ought to regulate the remarks of the critic 
are those in use at the Seminarium Prceceptorium, at Halle : — - 

I. Choice and arrangement of material by the student 
giving ihe lesson, i. Was the amount of material in fair 
proportion to the allotted time? 2. Was the material 
duly sifted, properly divided, and appropriately brought 
to a unity? 3. Was the plan of the lesson clear? 

II. Manner of treatment. 1. Did the teaching follow 
a systematic and appropriate order? 2. Was the lesson 
clearly presented, logically developed, and firmly impressed 
on the minds of the pupils, and so forth? 3. How was 
the questioning managed, and were the questions fairly 
divided among the pupils ? 

III. The personality of the teacher. What was the 
teacher's bearing ? Was he fresh, stimulating, and alive ? 
Did he master the class by look and voice? Was his 
language correct, concentrated, clear, concise? Was his 
reading worthy of being taken as a model? Was his 
personal manner commendable ? 

IV. Discipline. Did the teacher keep the whole class 
busy all the time ? Did he secure the attention of the 
pupils and make them all share in the work in equal 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 91 

degree? Did he give them recreation by pauses, oppor- 
tunity to stand, recitation in concert, and the like ? Did 
he have his eyes and ears open for misdemeanours, or did 
many things happen which he did not notice or did not 
consider ? 

V. The general importance and success of the lesson. 
The " practical master of method " would, of course, preside 
at these lessons ; but the professor should be generally present 
and take part in the criticism, summing up, and sometimes 
even testing the success of the lesson given by an extempore 
examination of the class, when the subject admitted of it. 

Let me repeat, because I think it a vital point, that I do 
not consider that the universities are equipped for the work of 
training teachers — either elementary or secondary — until they 
have, in addition to a master of method and a practising school, 
a professor of education, who will be the head or dean of the 
education faculty, so to speak. They should also have an 
education library containing some dozen copies of each of 
all the more important books, besides two or three copies of 
many others. There should also be an educational museum, 
fostered and managed by the local guild, and in connection 
with it a hall, in which educational questions might be dis- 
cussed, and of which every student of education should be 
a _member. 

I have presumed that the State would recognize the 
university license or diploma ; music and drawing being 
separately attested — the latter by the local School of Art. 

The State would thus, it may be said, be delegating its 
work to universities. But why not? The universities are 
already privileged State institutions for the professions. The 
Education Department need never part with the right of inquiry 
from time to time — a right which I suppose the Medical 
Council exercises as regards the medical Schools. If closer 
supervision were needed, with a view to prevent one university 



92 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

underselling another by lowering its standard, a Senior Inspector 
of schools might be attached as an assessor to the examining 
bodies in the universities. By granting this independence to 
the universities, excessive centralization of educational adminis- 
tration would be got rid of in a very vital matter. Different 
types of higher-grade and secondary schoolmasters would be 
sent out. All government, of course, is centralization more or 
less. In some things it is indispensable ; in warlike defence, 
for example, and in certain public services which have to do 
with the mechanical and industrial parts of the social organism ; 
but State centralization of the moral forces of society is always 
questionable — too often fatal. 

Professional qualification, theoretical and practical (such as 
I have sketched), can alone, let me repeat, make the teaching 
body truly a profession. Without this, it is not even a guild. 
From time immemorial, guilds have demanded specific qualifi- 
cations for " mastership," as, indeed, our university guilds do 
at this day. The qualification of a master in the teaching 
guild can, it is evident, alone ultimately rest on the study of 
the mind of man as a growing mind, for so only can be ascer- 
tained the ends, ways, and means of growth. We confidently 
aim at constituting such a guild — an incorporated body of edu- 
cated men with a great educational tradition, which it would be 
their business to pass on to their successors. How else can the 
fires, from time to time lighted by an educational genius here 
and there, be kept burning ? They go out, and have to be lighted 
again and again. We are thus, from age to age, too much at 
the mercy of individuals. 

The academic professional training of teachers would, I am 
certain, infuse a new spirit into all our schools, and raise the 
character and aim of every subject of instruction. The study 
of the philosophy of mind, for example, would, itself alone, 
compel the recognition of the ethical purpose of all school- 
work. It would thus tend to animate the teacher with a 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 93 

religious zeal, for the philosophy of mind in its educational 
bearing necessarily includes the study of the moral and 
religious instincts of man. It reveals the religious idea as 
the highest expression of the life of mind, intellectual and 
ethical, and as the intimate support and sanction of right 
conduct. Religion is thus seen to be a necessary and inner, 
and not an arbitrary and external, element in the education 
of the young. Without it all education is barren. The 
whole method of education contemplates the end and aim 
as dominant and first ; and that end is the spiritual life. 
When religion, in its broader aspects and essential meaning, 
is thus recognized by the student-teacher on scientific grounds, 
as something interwoven with every act of the school and 
as the summit and crown of the school- work, it will occupy 
a very different place in his estimate of his daily function 
to that w T hich it now does, when regarded, as it too often 
is, as a system of doctrine and belief which is to be some- 
how added on to other attainments — as something to be 
learned, and not as something to be lived. The tendency 
among teachers and taught alike is to look on religion as 
a " subject " to be " got up " alongside of other things, and not 
as the unum necessarium which is to give purpose and stimulus 
to the teacher, and daily sustenance to the pupil. When 
I said above that the philosophy of mind gives inspiration to 
the schoolmaster, I meant chiefly this, that it gives him an 
ideal of the education of the human spirit, and enlists him in 
the spiritual army as a conscious and willing militant. It is 
this that exalts, and this which, under the difficulties and 
vexations of school-work, can alone sustain. Whatever system 
of belief a teacher may accept and inculcate, he is compelled 
by his philosophy ever to subordinate all to the one thing 
needful — the spiritual ideal of life. The teaching and bearing 
of such a master convey their influence into every department 
of his work and give it dignity. This is what is meant by the 
old Catholic dictum that religion should permeate the school. 



94 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

There is such a thing, as I have often said, as teaching 
genius, which is independent of tradition and training, whether 
university or any other. There are teachers also who, though 
destitute of anything which can be called genius, are yet 
thoughtful and earnest men, endowed with a fair share of 
imagination and humour, in whom the routine methods of the 
school are vivified into living principles ; but, in the great 
majority of cases, the inherited and unrationalized methods of 
the school-workshop govern successive generations of teachers. 
The consequence is that the schoolmaster stands, in relation 
to his profession, precisely where the unscientific mechanic 
stands in relation to his particular trade. Save in a few 
exceptional cases of great native endowment, I am persuaded 
that it is only the study into philosophical principles that can 
give insight and continuous ethical stimulus to the teacher : it 
is the apprehension of educational ideals that can alone sustain 
and inspire him ; it is contact with the history of past efforts 
to educate the race that can alone give to him breadth and 
humanity. Without the sustaining energy and ideal impulse 
which flow from these studies, the teacher's vocation is, it 
seems to me, dreary enough : with them, there is a renewal of 
moral purpose and educational faith every morning. 

It is a beneficent arrangement of nature, doubtless, that 
enables so many men to work by rule and routine, " circling 
like a gin-horse," as Carlyle says, "for whom partial or total 
blindness is no evil, round and round, still fancying that it is 
forward and forward, and realize much — for himself victuals, 
for the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill 
or hemp-mill of economic society." But it is not such men we 
want for the spiritual work of a community — the building up 
of the intellectual and moral fabric of mind. We cannot 
command the services of genius, but we can at least, through 
a spiritual philosophy, give to all, save those whom nature has 
destined to be hodmen, a certain inspiration and a certain 
method; and inspiration is the fount of enthusiasm, while 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 95 

method regulates it. We want ethical fervour in the teacher ; 
but not at all that kind of enthusiasm which is the mere 
effervescence of aerated water. " How," to quote Carlyle 
again, " can an inanimate, mechanical gerund-grinder, the like 
of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at 
Niirnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of any- 
thing ; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable 
(by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but 
like a Spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit ; Thought kindling 
itself at the fire of Living Thought ? How should he give 
kindling, in whose inward man there is no live coal, but all is 
burnt out to a dead grammatical cinder? The Hinterschlag 
professors knew syntax enough, and of the human soul thus 
much : that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be 
acted on through the muscular integument by appliance of 
birch-rods. Alas ! so it is everywhere ; so will it ever ; till 
the hodman is discharged, or reduced to hod-bearing ; and 
an architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged ; till 
communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, 
that fashioning the souls of a generation by knowledge can 
rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by gun- 
powder." Things are not so bad now as when Carlyle wrote 
these words ; but, in so far as they are better, it is due to the 
gradual and insensible recognition of philosophy and method, 
even by those who affect to despise both. Give us the uni- 
versity training of teachers, and Carlyle's graphic words will 
ere long have only the antiquarian interest of an inscription 
on an Egyptian mummy-case. 

Note. — Richard Mulcaster, the author of "The Positions," 
born in 1530, and Head Master of Merchant Taylors' School, 
London, was the first man in England to advocate the training 
of teachers. Mr Quick, in his Educational Biographies, gives 
the following extract from Mulcaster's book, which is of so great 
interest as to merit reproduction here along with Mr Quick's 
introductory remarks. 



g6 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

" Of all the educational reforms of the nineteenth century, by 
far the most fruitful and most expansive is, in my opinion, the 
training of teachers. In this, as in most educational matters, the 
English, though advancing, are in the rear. Far more is made of 
'training' on the Continent and in the United States than in 
England. And yet we made a good start. Our early writers on 
education saw that the teacher has immense influence, and that to 
turn this influence to good account he must have made a study of 
his profession and have learnt ' the best that has been thought and 
done ' in it. Every occupation in life has a traditional capital of 
knowledge and experience, and those who intend to follow the 
business, whatever it may be, are required to go through some 
kind of training or apprenticeship before they earn wages. To this 
rule there is but one exception. In English elementary schools 
children are paid to 'teach' children, and in the higher schools the 
beginner is allowed to blunder at the expense of his first pupils 
into whatever skill he may in the end manage to pick up. But 
our English practice received no encouragement from the early 
English writers, Mulcaster, Brinsley 1 , and Hoole. 

1 John Brinsley (the elder), who married a sister of Bishop Hall's, and 
kept school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (was it the Grammar School?), was one 
of the best English writers on education. In his Consolation for our 
Grammar Schooles, published early in the sixteen hundreds, he says : 
' ' Amongst others myself having first had long experience of the manifold 
evils which grow from the ignorance of a right order of teaching, and 
afterwards some gracious taste of the sweetness that is to be found in the 
better courses truly known and practised, I have betaken me almost 
wholly, for many years, unto this weighty work, and that not without 
much comfort, through the goodness of our blessed God" (p. i). "And 
for the most part wherein any good is done, it is ordinarily effected by the 
endless vexation of the painful master, the extreme labour and terror of 
the poor children with enduring far overmuch and long severity. Now, 
whence proceedeth all this but because so few of those who undertake this 
function are acquainted with any good method or right order of instruction 
fit for a grammar school?" (p. 2). It is sad to think how many generations 
have since suffered from teachers "unacquainted with any good method or 
right order of instruction." And it seems to justify Goethe's dictum, "Der 
Englander ist eigentlich ohne Intelligenz" that for several generations to 
come this evil will be but partially abated. 



UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 97 

" As far as I am aware, the first suggestion of a training college 
for teachers came from Mulcaster. He schemed seven special 
colleges at the University ; and of these one is for teachers. 
Some of his suggestions, e.g., about 'University Readers' have 
lately been adopted, though without acknowledgment ; and as 
the University of Cambridge has since 1879 acknowledged the 
existence of teachers, and appointed a ' Teachers' Training 
Syndicate,' we may perhaps in a few centuries more carry out 
his scheme, and have training colleges at Oxford and Cambridge 1 . 
Some of the reasons he gives us have not gone out of date with his 
English. They are as follows : — 

"'And why should not these men (the teachers) have both this 
sufficiency in learning, and such room to rest in, thence to be 
chosen and set forth for the common service ? Be either children 
or schools so small a portion of our multitude ? or is the framing 
of young minds and the training of their bodies so mean a point of 
cunning ? Be schoolmasters in this Realm such a paucity, as they 
are not even in good sadness to be soundly thought on? If the 
chancel have a minister, the belfry hath a master : and where 
youth is, as it is eachwhere, there must be trainers, or there will be 
worse. He that will not allow of this careful provision for such a 
seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have had a good 
master himself, or hereafter to have a good one for his. Why 
should not teachers be well provided for, to continue their whole 
life in the school, as Divines, Lawyers, Physicians do in their 
several professions? Thereby judgment, cunning, and discretion 
will grow in them : and masters would prove old men, and such 
as Xenophon setteth over children in the schooling of Cyrus. 
Whereas now, the school being used but for a shift, afterward to 
pass thence to the other professions, though it send out very 
sufficient men to them, itself remaineth too too naked, considering 
the necessity of the thing. I conclude, therefore, that this trade 

1 At Cambridge (as also in London and Edinburgh) there is already a 
Training College for Women Teachers in Secondary Schools, and the 
Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews also train and grant Diplomas. 
Education is also a subject for ordinary Arts Graduation in all the Uni- 
versities. There are Lectureships and a course of training at Oxford and 
Cambridge and the University Colleges of England and Wales (1901). 

L. L. 7 



98 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES 

requireth a particular college, for these four causes. r. First, for 
the subject being the mean to make or mar the whole fry of our 
State. 2. Secondly, for the number, whether of them that are to 
learn, or of them that are to teach. 3. Thirdly, for the necessity 
of the profession, which may not be spared. 4. Fourthly, for the 
matter of their study, which is comparable to the greatest pro- 
fessions, for language, for judgment, for skill how to train, for 
variety in all points of learning, wherein the framing of the mind 
and the exercising of the body craveth exquisite consideration, 
beside the staidness of the person.'" 



99 



V. 



THE RESPECTIVE FUNCTIONS IN EDUCATION 
OF PRIMARY, SECONDARY, AND UNIVERSITY 
SCHOOLS 1 . 

Education is a great word. It is a truism to say that it 
comprehends every influence that goes to the formation of a 
mind. No man can give an account of it. A genuine auto- 
biography is an attempt to do so. But in this even a Goethe 
or a Ruskin will fail. These men, like all others, owed as 
much to those subtle influences that pass unnoticed as to the 
more self-conscious experiences which it is easy to record and 
estimate. We who have to do with education professionally 
are apt to forget this, and to exaggerate the influence of the 
school. We forget that the ancient Persian presented to the 
eye of the world a fine type of manhood, with no schooling at 
all, in our sense of the word ; that the Greek leapt by one 
bound into the van of humanity, and knew little but his 
Homer, a few moral apophthegms, and his simple lyre ; that 
the Roman had unfolded all his greatest qualities, and had 
proclaimed himself the coming master of the world in arms and 
laws, with little or no literary instruction. It cannot, then, be by 

1 Delivered to the Edinburgh Educational Conference of 1886. 

7—2 
LofC. 



IOO PRIMARY, SECONDARY, 

the Latin or mathematics we teach the boy that we make him 
a true or capable man. It is by the life we present for his 
admiration and acceptance in literature and history, and, above 
all, by the life which we ourselves live before his eyes. Our 
own lives, and the very movements and gestures and exclama- 
tions that reveal our lives, are probably the most potent of 
all influences in the education of the young. 

1 may seem to you to have fallen suddenly in love with the 
trite and the obvious, and, to have come to this, that I would 
substitute for the philosophy of education a few well-worn 
truisms and platitudes. But the fact is that as one grows 
older, and has wandered far and wide over the fields of 
educational controversy, dwelt on the history of the education 
of the race, and pondered the philosophy of the schools, one 
finds oneself in happy company with the crystallised wisdom of 
the ages. Even the function of much-vaunted science in the 
school can only be to enable the young to see truly what is 
already there before us to be seen, though obscured with a 
veil;i_while the supreme task of all education is to teach the 
young to see the ancient facts of our moral relations to each 
other, and the truth of the ancient truisms — to see truly what 
is often concealed by the veil of unconsidered words. -) 

Accordingly, I am not ashamed to utter truisms, and to 
reiterate that the formative power of the teacher is not in what 
he teaches, but in what he is — what he is, first, consciously or 
unconsciously, in himself, as a living and advancing mind, 
known of all men, and especially of all boys, and what he is 
consciously to his pupils in respect of educational aim, method, 
and manner. ( 

(These certainly are very general reflections, and yet of very 
close and particular application. For if the end of all our 
school-striving be not what our pupils ultimately have, but what 
they finally are — are, as receptive beings in harmonious relation 
with the simplicity, strength, and truth of nature, and as active 
helpful beings endowed with sympathy, given to sacrifice, loyal 



AND UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS IOI 

to duty, courteous in bearing — I say, if this be so, what a 
multitude of practical lessons for the teacher are implicit in 
such a conception ! 

And let me, in this connection, be strictly practical for a 
moment, and ask the headmaster of an English school, " Do 
you believe this that I have indicated to be the true outcome 
of school work ? Do you really believe ? You are a Hellenic 
and Roman scholar, and you are probably a theologian, and 
know your Bible. Well, then, if you believe it, is there any 
reason in the nature of things why, for example, your boys 
should be kept away from a knowledge of other nations and 
their commercial and industrial relations with ourselves, and 
those far-reaching lessons of humanity which such knowledge 
suggests ? Is there any reason why the insular pride, insolence 
and self-centred individualism of our British boys — sources 
these of much evil — should not be modified by a knowledge of 
other nations of men and their claims to our regard ? Can you 
truly promote what you ostensibly accept as the true end, the 
civic life you admit to be the true life, if you do not, by means 
of the facts of human relations, lead the boys of wealthy parents 
to understand their dependence on the poor, and the true 
significance of the co-operation of capital and labour? Can 
any good reason, again, be given why you should not protect 
the boy's future life by giving him some knowledge of his own 
physical organism ? Do you not call it on Sundays, when you 
preach, the ' Temple of the Spirit ' ? " I am speaking of 
geography, economics and hygiene, as subjects of a sound 
curriculum ; but on these a fifth or sixth form boy would be 
held to waste his time ! And so on I might go for pages, 
criticising existing practice, in the light of general principles 
universally admitted, and suggesting the materials to be used 
for the making of a true man in so far as he can be made. So 
potent are general truths, so keenly practical is a principle, so 
penetrating are truisms. It is life that truly educates us ; it is 
the revelation to the young mind of moral and spiritual ideas 



102 PRIMARY, SECONDARY, 

in their prosaic, but fruitful, relations to the hard facts and 
stern duties of common day ; it is the adapting boys to their 
environment which, we may presume, is the main purpose of 
the great English public school, as of all schools. Can any one 
who has looked at the records of our Law Courts for the past 
seven or eight years believe that this instruction is not needed ? 
Can any one believe that it is continuously given? 

I shall now pass on to consider the bearing of this, by no 
means, I hope, inapt or inept introduction, to the special 
question which heads this address. 

By the common consent of all nations, as well as of 
physiologists, the life of the body and the mind of man falls 
into three periods — the period up to 7, that of the infant 
school ; the period to 14, that of the primary school ; and the 
period from 14 to 21, that of the secondary school and the 
university. These, I think, may again be subdivided thus — to 
the age of 5, the age of 5 to 7, from 7 to n, from n to 14, 
from 14 to 18, from 18 to 21. But I do not propose to deal 
here with these various subdivisions, but to confine myself to 
the larger divisions which we have agreed to call the primary, 
secondary, and university periods. 

Now, let us get hold of some leading idea which shall give 
us at once guidance and a criterion of judgment at all these 
stages. That idea I believe to be contained chiefly in the word 
Nutrition. In the primary stage nutrition of Feeling, inner 
and outer; that is to say, of the emotions within and the 
realities of sense without. And through these, Training ; but 
not without a certain amount of hard discipline. 

In the secondary stage, Nutrition is again the governing 
idea, now by means of the hard facts of life and the presentation 
of concrete ideals; and through these, a 7?iaxi??ium of discipline. 

In the university stage the idea is still Nutrition ; but now 
through ideas, with self-discipline as the necessary condition of 
the living apprehension of ideas. 



AND UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS IO3 

And here it is necessary to distinguish between training 
and discipline, terms often confounded. If I carry a child 
through the explanation of any object of knowledge, step by 
step, in the true logical order of that explanation, and, repeating 
this again and again, finally cause him to reproduce the process, 
I am calling into activity his intellectual powers in the order in 
which they alone can truly comprehend. I am thus training 
him. If, on the other hand, I call upon him to apply past 
knowledge to the explanation of some new thing, I discipline 
him. Let us take an illustration : the geologist may explain to 
me a section of the earth's surface by exhibiting in logical 
sequence the causes whose operation have made it what it is. 
As often as I follow him through this explanation my faculties 
are at work in their natural order, and I am thereby trained. 
But if the same geologist, knowing that he has conveyed to 
me through his past instructions, principles, and causal forces, 
takes me to a new section of country and calls on vie to map it 
and explain it, he disciplines me. Again, in the moral sphere, 
which concerns doing under the stimulus of motives, when I 
lead a child by the hand and guide him to the feeling of the 
right motive and to action in accordance with it, I train him. 
When I throw him on his own resources, and, withdrawing my 
helping hand, call on him to do his duty, which means to' 
sacrifice inclination to the moral " ought "■ — to offer up self to 
virtue — I discipline him. In intellectual and moral training 
there is the following of a stronger on whom the weaker leans ; 
in discipline there is the self-exertion of will in the face of 
difficulties — this Will being the root of our distinctive humanity. 
Training may make a well-disposed youth, but it is discipline 
alone that makes him strong, virile — a will, a man. Training 
is the peculiar function of the primary school. Discipline, 
again, is the peculiar function of the secondary school. 

When the primary and secondary schools have attained 
their end, we have a great result ; but after all, our pupil is, as 
yet, only a man among men, a capable, upright citizen, it may 



104 PRIMARY, SECONDARY, 

be. That is all, though much. He is fit for more than this, 
however. He can rise above mere world-citizenship, and 
become a "citizen of a city not made with hands. The divine 
in him — his spirit-hood as distinguished from his mere man- 
hood—claims fellowship and kindred with the Universal. He 
can rise to the contemplation of ideas and regard them face to 
face. The True is an idea — it is the motive inspiration of 
scientific inquiry; the Beautiful is an idea — it is the subtle 
perception of the harmony and ideal of the concrete world; 
the Good is an idea — it is the comprehension of the Divine 
purpose of the universal movement. When man attains to his 
full stature and to communion with ideas, he raises his head 
above the vaporous clouds of earth and breathes an " ampler 
ether, a diviner air." He now begins to see the cosmic order 
as truly a spiritual order, and returning to the ordinary life of 
the citizen, he descends from his Sinai — not to despise the 
mean things of daily life, but now rather to see the God of 
the mountain-top in them, and to illumine all with the light 
that comes from within. He no longer sees with the eye of 
sense. For him Nature is now bathed in " the light that never 
was on sea or land," the glory of setting suns with all its 
splendour is now to him a revelation of the universal Spirit, 
the infinite variety of Nature only the "garment we see Him by." 
The living thought which is all, and in all, now finds in the 
spirit of man a responsive pulse. It is to promote this larger 
life of mind that the university exists : — to give food, the 
nutrition of ideas, to supply the spiritual manna which will 
never fail us as each morning we rise to a new day. The 
discipline intellectual and moral peculiar to this stage of 
education is essentially, however, .re^-discipline. 

Such I conceive to be the three stages of education. 
These be brave words, some of you may say, but what 
guidance do they afford? By what cunning application can 
they be made to bear on the business of the teacher's prosaic 
life? The application will be apparent enough to others. 



AND UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS 105 

Depend on it, principles are the most practical, the most 
potent, of all things. They are inexhaustible fountains of 
every-day detail. 

To pass on to the further elucidation of my text in the 
order above indicated : — 

I. I have said that the chief aim of the primary school 
is the nutrition of Feeling, inner and outer. The child is 
receptive and his will is weak. This receptivity is a wise 
provision of Nature for future growth. To all the primary 
sentiments which distinguish man, the child is more open than 
the youth. You may play what tune you please on his 
sensitive chords. Let us take care that it is always a melody 
and not a discord of jarring notes. No educational enthusiast 
has ever yet exaggerated the impressionability of the child, his 
capacity for the emotions which lie at the basis of all our moral 
life. Love, tenderness, sympathy, the desire of the approba- 
tion of others, veneration, nay, even the spirit of sacrifice, and 
even a certain dim presentiment of the harmonious play of the 
nobler feelings of human nature are all ready, nay, longing, 
to be evoked into activity. Response is eager. It almost 
anticipates appeals. What, after all, do our greatest heroes 
show to the admiring crowd but simply these primary senti- 
ments gathered into a unity of life in them, directed to some 
great purpose, furnishing the motive-forces of their greatest 
deeds ? You have in these primary feelings the source of all 
spiritual life. Do not distrust them. Believe in them. The 
child before you is not an incarnation of depravity. That is 
an old-world fable. He is nearer God than you are. Heaven 
lies about him. Christ did not say " of such is the kingdom 
of heaven " to furnish a text for the glosses and distortions of 
theologians in their bilious moments. Depend upon it, He 
meant it. It is by the watchful guidance and gentle admoni- 
tion of the child that you lead him to the right and good. 
You do not supply motives for his daily acts, you evoke them 



106 PRIMARY, SECONDARY, 

out of himself. They are there waiting to be turned to use. 
It is your privilege to touch his spirit to fine issues. Your 
business is to be watchful, but not meddlesome and suspicious. 
The loving hand pointing the right way, the upraised finger 
warning from the wrong path, the supporting of the weak will 
with your strength, — -these are your methods. To preach is 
futile ; food so offered will be rejected. It is by the presenta- 
tion to the open mind of individual instances, the direction 
and encouragement of individual acts in the common things of 
life that you give the sustenance the child needs ; above all by 
making yourself a particular instance, always present to him, 
of kindliness, of justice, of mercy, though not without the 
occasional anger that " sins not." In such teaching, severity 
and harshness are surely out of place. I often smile in schools 
at the solemn exaggeration by the teacher of children's offences, 
when I compare their young untried souls with the tarnished 
conscience of their reprover, the aggregation of iniquities which 
are incarnated in the dominating and indignant master. He, 
forsooth, is virtue, the child is vice. Look on this picture and 
on that ! Does it not ever occur to him how gladly even he — 
magister, dominus, scholasticus — would change places with 
those young souls ! 

"Not poppy, nor mandragora, 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world 
Shall ever medicine us to that sweet sleep 
Which we owed yesterday." 

The aim of the primary school, I repeat, is nutrition of 
inner feeling, of the emotions and sentiments through particular 
instances. The soil is thereby enriched and prepared for the 
harvest — virtue. 

But nutrition of inner feeling is not all ; there must be 
nutrition of outer feeling. The real of nature, as well as 
the real of emotion, is the material of primary education. 
Outside the schoolroom the child lives in an ever-changing 
moral atmosphere of emotion chaotic and perplexing; inside 



AND UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS 107 

the schoolroom, the same life is to be found, but regulated, 
controlled, explained, enriched by the teacher. So with the 
real of outer sense. Outside the schoolroom the child lives 
his life under sense conditions. He is feeling his way to 
the understanding of the objects around him. Nature and 
the products of the hand of man working on the crude 
stuff of nature, press on him. He has to establish relations 
with all these that he may use them for life and work and 
enjoyment. They are in truth the raw material which he has 
to shape to moral and spiritual ends. This outside life is 
also to be the inside life of the school. The teacher has to 
help the child to see, and understand, and to organize the 
impressions which he brings into it. Thus, when he goes out 
of the school, he goes out not to a novel world, but to a world 
with which he has been always familiar and which is now 
to some extent explained and illumined by the teacher's better 
knowledge. He carries with him an increase of the power of 
seeing and knowing and correlating. 

Such is the function of the primary school as the nurse 
of feeling and the home of training ; but not, as I have said, 
wholly without discipline. The voice of authority must always 
be heard. The child must learn that he lives and must live 
under Law and that the characteristic of true life is always 
effort. The merely intellectual discipline is sufficiently ensured 
by the acquisition of the subsidiary attainments of reading, 
writing, drawing, arithmetic, &c. according to right methods. 

II. At the age of approaching puberty (about 14) we pass 
into a new sphere. At this age the boy tends to become 
boisterous, and the girl frivolous. Our work now is mainly 
governed by the purpose of discipline. Law now meets and 
controls the turbulence of the phase through which the human 
spirit is passing. Nutrition, it is true, is never to be absent — 
nutrition which is possible through the real of inner feeling 
alone, and the real of outer nature, as in the primary stage ; 
but if the foundations of this nutrition have not been laid in 



108 PRIMARY, SECONDARY, 

the primary period, I doubt our success now. Opportunity is 
offered once to all. It may never be offered a second time. 
The teacher, at least, must assume this. The chief lesson 
to be taught now is the lesson of law and duty and of personal 
effort. 

Nature seems at this age to yearn for activity. The boy is 
no longer so ready to receive impressions as to make them. 
His will, or what he mistakes for his will, comes to the front, 
and in bodily and mental matters alike, he loves to do. He 
cannot bear being talked to or talked at. He has opinions 
now. He judges with imbecile self-complacency things and 
men. He wants to show what he is, and what he can do. 
How are we to meet this ? Really a difficult question. For 
we have, above all things, to let him grow, and growth is not 
possible with repression — nay, repression at this stage enslaves 
and converts the less bold into skulks and sneaks, the more 
bold into evasive dodgers paltering with the truth ; and both 
into contemners of the pure and good. Here the boy himself 
points the way to the teacher. Work is what he needs, and 
wants. Let him have it. Let him be brought to face diffi- 
culties in learning ; and though some of the subjects he studies 
want the attraction of the "real," let him learn to master them 
by sheer force. It is labour that forms ingenuous minds. 
Formal studies — languages and mathematics — with the rudi- 
ments of which he has been conversant in the latter portion 
of his primary stage, must now occupy more than one-half of 
his time. His specific moral life, again, can now no longer be 
stimulated or fostered by sentiment, as when he was a child, 
but only indirectly, and by intercourse with moral ideals in 
conduct. This is the age which can appreciate heroism, and 
understand the sterner and heroic virtues. So with ideals in 
the things of intellect and literary imagination. Art in litera- 
ture will unconsciously impress him and mould him. We must 
not always improve upon the lessons; we must let him draw 
his own inferences. I believe much in literature at this stage 



AND UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS 109 

as the chief real or nutritive element, and in its silent influence 
on character, much more than I believe in the real of nature 
as presented in elementary science. This last too, however, 
must have its due and daily place. The order observable in 
the external world may even possibly help to bring order into 
the internal chaos, which at present constitutes the boy, spite 
of all his pretentiousness and conceit. 

But not only is his rampant will to be brought in contact 
with the hardships of intellectual work that it may encounter 
and overpower ; his body also must be allowed its full activity. 
In gymnastic, and, above all, in organized games he should 
find an outlet, and also a discipline — the discipline of diffi- 
culties overcome, and of self-imposed law obeyed. 

Thus between 14 and 18 we gradually subject the boy to 
Law, and give him the priceless possession of concrete ideals 
in conduct — great personalities ; and also of art in literature. 
He is thus tamed, if not subjugated ; and when he approaches 
the gates of the university, his brave show of self-importance, 
were he dissected thoroughly, would be found to be hollow at 
the heart, and to mean little more than the walking-canes, neck- 
ties, and general masherdom and bravado, by means of which 
he harmlessly works it off to the admiration of that other half 
of humanity, which, formerly despised with all a boy's con- 
tempt, he now desires above all to attract. Desires to attract, 
I say ; for it is not the fairer half of creation he is yet thinking 
of, but of himself alone as an irresistible object of admiration 
to that fairer half. An excellent arrangement of nature, for 
thus he forms an ideal of what he ought to be by seeing 
himself through the rapt eyes of imaginary admirers. Nor 
does even the grave and serious youth escape the crisis of 
self-importance in its inner and more dangerous form. 

III. He is within the Academic gates, and we have now 
to ask what is the function of the university in regard of him. 
I may be wrong, but I do not believe that the university forms 
character. Character in all its essential features is already 



IIO PRIMARY, SECONDARY, 

formed in the young matriculant. The home and the school 
have done this. The university may supplement their work ; 
it cannot do it. 

The function of the university has, in truth, more close 
relation to that of the primary school than to that of the 
secondary school ; for the mind at this stage demands realities, 
not forms alone : it seeks a rationalizing of knowledge in its 
principles. Speaking generally, the secondary school is con- 
cerned chiefly with the instruments of knowledge, the university 
with knowledge itself as science and philosophy. Its aim, 
accordingly, is chiefly Nutrition ; but no longer nutrition of mere 
feeling as in the primary school, but of Ideas. Training and 
discipline are, it is true, involved in the true grasp of ideas, 
but they are not the specific university aim. The nutrition of 
ideas — this is the great academic function, it seems to me. 
Nor are discipline and training to be given by the university, 
but by the student to himself. The youth has now escaped 
from the bondage of law, and must work from his own centre. 
The university does its work when it unfolds the domain of 
knowledge to the opening adolescent mind, and invites it to 
enter in and take possession, and when it provides the material 
apparatus of self-instruction. The Professor is only a guide 
and an example. The essence of university life is freedom for 
the student and freedom for the Professor. It is simply because 
the university has become a certifying and graduating body 
that even the calling of class rolls is justifiable. Even as a 
graduating body I doubt, after all, if it is justified in calling 
them. The Professor offers to show the student the way to 
knowledge, and to teach him how to use the instruments of 
knowledge whether they be books or microscopes ; and there 
his function ends. If any parent fears to send his son to the 
unfettered life of an university, let him keep him at home and 
call in a trained nurse or a paternal tutor. 

-S^discipline, .restraining, through the free pursuit of ideas 
which attract by their eternal and inherent charm all ingenuous 



AND UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS III 

spirits — this is the purpose of an university. There can be no 
self-discipline without freedom. This is of the essence of mind ; 
God has ordered it so. True, freedom may lead to the tasting 
of the tree that is forbidden, and in expulsion for a time from 
Paradise. Be it so. Such is the universal condition of ado- 
lescent and adult life. By bringing to bear the schoolmaster — 
the Law — on the university student, we make the unworthy less 
worthy, and the worthy we irritate and repress in their onward 
striving. 

What follows from this general view ? Certain very practical 
results. Boys in years, and boys in mind, though they be 
physically grown up, have no business within academic walls. 
Their place is the secondary school, where they may receive 
the intellectual and moral discipline which may fit them to 
breathe the pure air of freedom and the rare ether of ideas. If 
the secondary school fail, well then freedom of study also, not 
compulsory curricula, is alone in place in the university. 

And what are ideas ? I shall not venture on a definition 
where Plato failed and Aristotle did not succeed. And yet I 
know what I mean. For is not "The True " an idea? And is 
not the pursuit of science and philosophy the pursuit of the 
True? At these academic gates the student is to cast aside 
the idols of the den and of the market-place and, unencumbered, 
to question and to investigate in loyal obedience to the divine 
summons, to know. In philology, in philosophy, in the study 
of Nature in its many forms, in Art, he is called upon to look 
face to face at the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Even 
when the student himself is unconscious of the divine presence, 
nay may deny it in his ardent pursuit of material science, it is 
yet with him, for his aim is the True. Step by step he is putting 
himself in harmony with the scheme of the universe, and pre- 
paring for the final vision. The truth of this and of that he 
seeks for, but these separate truths are but the fragments of 
the whole, and lead him to the whole. The conception of the 
unity of the whole, as seen in the wisdom and working of the 



112 PRIMARY, SECONDARY, 






eternal Reason teaching him by the things which He has made, 
awaits him. The student-spirit is thus brought into relation 
with the universal Spirit, which effects in him the fruits of the 
Spirit— above all, harmony of soul and all the virtues. From 
having been a reasoning being he now becomes a being of 
Reason. 

It is philosophy, and history treated in a philosophical 
spirit, that holds the key of the temple of Reason. But if 
philosophy should fail him, literature will be found to be an 
universal solvent ; for it is the creative thought of man on man 
cast in beautiful forms. It is a striving after the inner truth of 
life and a direct and informal penetration into the heart of 
things ; it lives in the idea and by the ideal. Harmony of 
thought and life — a tie between all special knowledges may be 
found even here. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that when I speak of science 
and philosophy, I speak of ' arts ' in the mediaeval sense — the 
whole circle of rationalized knowledge. The merely professional 
studies which fit to be physician, theologian, lawyer, teacher, 
are only dependences on the university properly conceived, 
mere accidents of the substance. The university itself was 
founded in arts and still truly lives only by arts. An aggregate 
of professional colleges can never constitute an university. 
The idea is not there ; it cannot live as purely professional. 
In professional schools, at least if they are part of an university 
organization, no man is a fit Professor who is not alive to the 
university idea, who does not suggest to his students the intimate 
relations of all knowledge, the large philosophy which permeates 
and gives significance to every subject. If the student does 
not attain to this, he has fallen short of the academic aim. 

But how can the student breathe the purely scientific 
atmosphere of the university if he does not come prepared? 
If he spends the years of his 'arts' course in acquiring the 
mere instruments, linguistic and mathematical, he can never 
enter the temple of science at all. At best he can take but a 



AND UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS 113 

cursory glance. I am well aware that the world gets along by 
compromise, and there can be no objection to a year or so 
being devoted to the mere instruments within the walls of a 
university ; but let it be understood that even when we accept 
this, we must yet demand a much higher qualification in the 
matriculant than we do now. After a year spent among the 
instruments, the student at the age of about 19 should be 
in a position to throw himself into real studies — philology, 
philosophy, history, literature, economics, art, physical science. 
To take the encyclopaedic round would be impossible now- 
a-days, but by the thorough investigation of a department he 
gains admission to " the idea " and thereby becomes a scientific 
thinker. Discipline in one department, if his teacher be alive 
to the correlation of all departments, is, if properly understood 
and properly pursued, discipline in all. He thereby attains to 
that reverence for all knowledge, that patient waiting for truth, 
and that philosophical comprehension which is the consum- 
mation of all true education of the intelligence. This indeed 
is what intellectual culture means, and that the outcome of the 
whole is ethical in the true sense it would not be difficult, in 
fitting place and at fitting time, to show. 

It is by the exercise of this its distinctive function, as above 
indicated, that the university liberalizes the professions and 
raises them above the level of skilled trades. The graduate it 
sends out to the various professions, if worthy, can never forget, 
even in the pressure of practical life, that he has once for all 
enrolled himself a avis of the city of Reason, of which he is 
a freeman. 



L. L. 



ii4 



VI. 



THE GENERAL FUNCTION OF THE 
PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 . 

The debate in the House of Lords 2 on the Education Code 
which ended in a majority of forty-eight, virtually condemning 
the action of the Education Department since 1870 in so far 
as it had encouraged anything beyond the most elementary 
instruction, was an event interesting in itself, and significant 
in the history of education in England. Had the promoters 
of what was virtually a vote of censure belonged to the Tory 
party only, the result might have been accepted as little more 
than a survival of a spirit supposed to have been extinct. It 
was not so, however. The Bishop of Exeter and Lord 
Sherbrooke ably represented the other side, and were in 
themselves evidence that there is a considerable feeling of 
discontent with the action of the Department, and a still 
wider suspicion of its tendencies, if not of its aims. It is 
worth while to inquire whether there are any grounds for this 
dissatisfaction. 

It would be absurd in our country to suppose that any 
abstract educational theories have had anything to do, in the 

1 Fraser^s Magazine, Art. entitled, "The House of Lords and Popular 
Education," 1880. 

2 Debate of the 18th of June in which the following motion by Lord 
Norton was carried: "That a humble address be presented to Her Majesty, 
praying that Her Majesty would be graciously pleased to direct that the 
Fourth Schedule be omitted from the New Code of Regulations issued 
by the Committee of Privy Council on Education." 



GENERAL FUNCTION OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 1 5 

first instance at least, with the wide-spread doubts and dis- 
satisfaction that ultimately found confused expression in the 
House of Lords. The money question is the real starting 
point of the malcontents. It is the large vote that stirs into 
activity the educational intelligence of the English people, 
and leads them to ask the question, What are we paying for, 
and whither are we tending? Three millions per annum is 
a large sum, and might build more than one ironclad. The 
uneasiness with which many see this expenditure, which, after 
all, is only a portion of the total that the country pays for 
educating its poorer citizens, leads them to fasten blindly 
on a certain class of payments that seem to be superfluous. 
In addition to money grants calculated on the average at- 
tendance at a school, and the grants for passes in the 
"three R's," the Department pays for a class of subjects 
denominated " specific," which in the opinion of the House 
of Lords are not necessary to the child of the working man — 
nay, more, in their general effect and social tendency, are 
positively hurtful. These subjects certainly strike one, at the 
first blush, as out of place in a primary school : they are 
to be found in the Fourth Schedule attached to the main 
body of the Code, and include mathematics, English literature, 
Latin (in Scotland, Greek and Physics), French, German, 
mechanics, physiology, physical geography, botany, and do- 
mestic economy ! It may be possible to urge a good educa- 
tional argument against giving instruction in such subjects 
in a primary school, but it must be conceded that the purely 
financial objection breaks down ; for the total sum spent on 
such subjects (excluding domestic economy for girls, to which 
we presume no objection will be taken), is comparatively a 
mere trifle. 

As part of an argument, however, against the alleged 
tendencies of the Department gradually and insensibly to 
draw into itself the whole work of secondary education, the 
financial objection may have weight. Is there any such 



Il6 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

tendency? Is it credible that in men depressed by routine 
the love of power should still survive ? Is it conceivable that 
fervour in a "cause" should stir the official mind? It is only 
on the assumption that such things are possible that we can 
imagine any ground for imputing to the Department a dis- 
position to transgress its limits ; for whatever may be said 
of other departments of the State, it is in the minds of the 
permanent officials that we must seek for the motives and 
aims that determine successive Education Codes ; and this, 
because the subject is one of such infinite detail that the 
master of the details must, as pilot, navigate the vessel, 
whoever may be nominally its captain. For our own part, 
we do not for a moment think the Department open to any 
such imputation. That the love of power can exist in the 
official mind, and in certain cases can even flourish under 
folds of red tape, we might be induced to believe; but we 
do not think that any case has been made out of a deliberate 
disposition on the part of the English Education Office to 
exceed its powers. And, indeed, why should they? They 
have enough to do. A large and intricate machine is worked 
with surprising efficiency, and we are satisfied that to work 
it demands all the energy and ability in the service of the 
Minister of Education. Since the days of Sir J. P. Kay- 
Shuttleworth the Department has been gradually absorbing 
the whole primary education of the country, and it is scarcely 
any exaggeration to say that it is now (alas !) cognizant of what 
is going on in every primary school in the country at every 
successive minute of the school day. By some this may be 
regarded as a proud position. To have conquered so great 
an intellectual empire by means of money, aided by the 
jealousies and mutual distrusts of Churches, is no small 
triumph. But it is only in a limited and conventional sense, 
a success ; for, with the advantages, come all the evils of 
over-centralization, and these are more to be deprecated in 
the educational than in other spheres of State administration. 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL WJ 

The life of education is the freedom of the teacher and the 
school, within certain general restrictions ; and where this 
does not exist, the intellectual and moral evils of centralization 
far more than counterbalance the gain. Every teacher in the 
country takes his orders from the Code, studies the Code, and 
devotes his energies to satisfy or to circumvent it. The power 
that resides in the Permanent Secretary's pen is probably 
greater than that wielded by any other official in the empire. 
Still this centralization has been an unpurposed, though an 
inevitable, growth ; and there seems no way out of it except 
by delegating some of the powers to the county governing 
bodies which we are now promised. County autonomy, con- 
trolled by a central official Council consisting partly of experts, 
is not inconsistent with the State's obtaining all the best ends 
of a national system — nay, it is probably the only way of best 
attaining those ends'. 

We say that the power already exercised by the Depart- 
ment, and the many burdens that it has even now to bear, 
must subject it to a great strain ; and this, among other things, 
forbids our suspecting it of designs on the secondary education 
of the country. Were there any indications of such a design, 
the proposed inroad into this new domain would certainly 
have to be resisted. For, while admitting that secondary 
instruction is a subject clamantly calling for State organization, 
the work would have to be set about under very different 
auspices from that of the present Department, and would 
have to be controlled by a larger and more liberal spirit 
through a Council constituted by Parliament. We believe 
the fact simply to be, that impatient professors of all the 
"ologies" have been struck with admiration of the mighty 
instrument which the Queen in Council had put into their 
hands, and have pressed their various pet educational crotchets 
on the patient and perplexed Permanent Secretary. The result 

1 This is what Government is now contemplating (1901). 



Il8 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

has been, that round the dry and meagre Code introduced 
by Mr Lowe in 1861, there has grown, by inevitable accretion, 
the list of " specific subjects " which now call forth so much 
adverse comment. We cannot believe the Department to be 
insensible to the humour of the situation, and we half suspect 
that they have with a certain wilful glee given the "modern 
spirit " full rein just to see what the issue would be. 

We not only acquit the Department of any such ambition 
as that attributed to them, but we believe that they are only 
acting on the line of the true Liberal tradition in education, 
viz. that it is the duty of the State in its own interest to see 
that all its citizens have at least an opportunity afforded them 
of being educated, not only up to the level of their existing 
position in the social scale, but up to the level of their possible 
position. Nor are we inconsistent in supporting, at the same 
time, both the House of Lords and " the Department " : the 
apparent inconsistency is reconciled by a proper understanding 
of the aims and the social restrictions of popular education. 
We believe that the more education a man has, if the sub- 
stance and method of that education be first wisely settled, 
the better citizen he will be — nay, the better will he do even 
the humblest work assigned to him. If any discontent arises, 
it will be due not to the fact of the man's education, but to 
the fact that he is educated beyond the level of his neighbours, 
and that, while raised by his ability and acquirements out of 
sympathy with the life of his fellow-labourers, he is nevertheless 
debarred from finding occupation more suited to an intellectual 
life, which he yet sees to be easily within the reach of men 
socially more fortunate than himself, while in respect of edu- 
cation they are his inferiors. 

The question put before the country by the House of 
Lords is not at all whether the Department is trenching on 
the sphere of secondary education and spending money ille- 
gitimately. The Lords do not understand their own difficulty. 
The term "secondary" education is loosely and inaccurately 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 119 

used. The real point is — and some of the speakers seemed 
to be vaguely conscious .of it — Up to what age is imperial 
revenue to be burdened with the cost of education for the 
operative classes : and having determined this, how shall the 
time at the disposal of the child be used ? Are we at present 
using the time profitably and getting our money's worth ? As 
a matter of fact, the school education of the masses of the 
population ends in the twelfth year ; nor is it likely, while 
social necessities are what they are, that it will ever be 
otherwise. But surely it is the function of the State, always 
presuming that it has any educational function at all, to 
encourage the continuance of school life as long as the 
pressing physical needs of the poorer classes permit. The 
House of Lords (we refer to the reactionary members) may 
rest assured that in the present, or indeed any, constitution 
of society, the prolongation beyond the twelfth year will not 
be great. The age of fifteen is not likely in any one case 
to be exceeded. The longer the period of school life, the 
more fruitful is the result of the earlier years of training, and 
the more certainly will the level of intelligence of the operative 
classes be raised — not only of those individuals who benefit 
by the prolonged instruction, but (and this is the important 
point) of the whole social class to which they belong. Is 
it necessary at this time of day to argue that this is a matter 
of State concern? Nations are now industrial communities 
competing with each other, and the weapon with which they 
now compete, and must for the future compete, is intelligence. 
It is no longer an open question whether we are to rely on 
the intelligence, as well as on the moral and religious up- 
bringing of the skilled mechanic : we must do so. Technical 
training in the various manufacturing industries can reach only 
the few ; and, moreover, we believe that infinitely more im- 
portant than any amount of technical training is the general 
intelligence of the workman as that has been developed in 
the public school. Given a well-exercised, open mind, and 



120 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

the requisite technical knowledge and aptitude will be very 
easily acquired under the guidance of trained masters of 
industry sent out by Technical Colleges when we have them. 

A leading aim of the primary school, then, is the cultivation 
of the human intelligence, and we sincerely believe that this is 
not attainable under the restrictions which Mr Lowe devised in 
the Revised Code of 1861, or those which Lord Sherbrooke 
would now reimpose. The meagre requirements of Mr Lowe 
would probably cost as much to the State as a more liberal 
demand, and would bring back to society little or no return. 
It might with truth be maintained that the bare technical arts 
of reading, writing, and arithmetic are of less moment to the 
individual and the community than the assiduous cultivation 
of the intelligence, even to the comparative neglect of these 
arts. It is fortunately true that a certain amount of discipline 
is indirectly given in the course of learning to read and write, 
especially if good methods are employed ; but would not more 
of these accomplishments themselves be acquired were the 
daily instruction made subordinate to the training of the 
spiritual instrument by which they are acquired? Lord 
Sherbrooke attempts to strengthen his position by giving us 
his experience of boys who had passed the sixth standard, 
and who could not act as his private readers in such a way 
as to make listening on his part an occupation either pleasing 
or profitable. So then we are to understand, by Lord Sher- 
brooke's own confession, that his policy has been a failure. 
We should have expected nothing else. Mr Lowe instructs boys 
in the deciphering of printed characters, and then complains 
that, when all is done, they cannot read to him satisfactorily 
blue-books or the Fortnightly, Why should they ? Reading 
aloud in any sense other than the mere naming of vocables is 
an act of intelligence, and an act requiring an ever higher 
intelligence as the subject-matter of what is read grows in 
subtlety and complexity. Even with the help of more disci- 
plined and better-informed minds, very few of the middle and 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 121 

upper classes can read in a way that satisfies at once the 
understanding and the ear of a cultivated listener. Probably, 
no accomplishment is more conclusive evidence that a boy has 
been well-educated than the power of reading well. We are 
quite ready to agree with Lord Sherbrooke : good reading is 
more important than a knowledge of the elements of Latin or 
of electricity and magnetism ; and until the former is done, the 
latter may be left out of the curriculum of the people's schools. 
But how is reading, such as Lord Sherbrooke desiderates, to be 
obtained? Only by familiarizing the mind with the subject- 
matter of books, and giving it command over the words of 
literature, and the ideas which those words denote. The 
House of Lords would not, we believe, object to this being 
done ; but they are probably not aware that in accepting this 
as the standard of education, they aim very much higher than 
the promoters of a smattering of the specific or so-called 
" secondary " subjects do. Such a result is not to be attained 
except by a curriculum of instruction, carefully adapted to the 
age of the pupils, in the realities of sense and of thought The 
Education Code should aim at this, and not at the beggarly 
knowledge of the vocables of a reading-book which has been 
carefully restricted in its scope to secure for the pupil a 
Government " pass " and Government pence. 

If we ask next on what materials the intelligence of the 
young is to be led to exercise itself, we answer again, on the 
realities of sense and of thought. By the former we mean 
nature and man's relation to it, without any pretence to science 
and its (to children) barren terms and empty formulated 
expressions ; by the latter we mean the ideas and language 
of moral and religious truth, and of imaginative literature. It 
is only in this way that we bring the young mind in direct 
contact with the substance of the mental life of all who have 
emerged above barbarism, and thereby prepare them for the 
future teachings of the lecture-room, the village library, and 
the church. By such instruction alone we awaken the intelli- 



122 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

gence and engage the moral affections of the young, and so 
best fit them for their future lives. Reading must accompany, 
or, at least, closely follow, the movements of the active opening 
mind ; and then, at whatever stage we have to part with the 
child, society will be the better for what we have done, and 
the child himself will have received a start in a truly rational 
life, and have such consolations in the toils and vicissitudes 
of his humble career as an awakened spirit can give. To 
imagine that a boy so educated will be a worse ploughman 
or a worse man than if he had been left in the condition of 
dumb driven cattle, is to suppose a contradiction in thought 
and to despair of the future of humanity. To imagine, on the 
other hand, that we attain the human and humane ends of 
popular education by sprinkling the misunderstood terms of all 
the sciences through our schoolrooms is the very folly and 
perversity of educational fanaticism. All that such misappre- 
hension of the relations of science to the work of the people's 
school can effect is the pretence of knowledge — a pretence as 
hurtful to the teacher as to the pupil, and certain to bring 
discredit on the very name of education. 

The training of the intelligence by presenting it with the 
food suited to its period of growth and which it can readily 
assimilate, is, however, after all, only a means to a higher 
end — the moral and religious education of the pupil. This, 
surely, is the supreme consideration in the case of each 
individual, and therefore also in the people's school. The 
moral element in the mechanic will accomplish more for 
industry than the technique of his trade. We say moral and 
religious, for though we are far from denying that a certain 
moral education can be given without religion, we are satisfied 
that, deprived of the inspiration of religion and of the motives 
and aspirations of the spiritual life, the morality will be meagre, 
attenuated, and lifeless. The result, apart from all theological 
and ecclesiastical considerations, will not be satisfactory so far 
as the mere humanity of the child is concerned. It is melan- 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 23 

choly to think that our religious strifes are to shut out the child 
of the poor man (who is profoundly indifferent to them) from 
all that most deeply touches the heart and awakens the 
sentiment of mankind. Is it reasonable that the children of 
operatives should be debarred from all that most surely 
furnishes consolation and hope in the chances and changes of 
this mortal life, because a few of the dogmas that have been 
erected on the broad human basis of our common Christianity 
are distasteful to the illuminated and fanatical few ? The poor 
man and the struggling woman among the poor cannot be 
expected to find a substitute for religion in that self-complacent 
sense of superiority which suffices to sustain the heart of the 
intellectual Agnostic, although as a matter of fact many, alas, 
are trying to do so. The moral and religious influence which 
should pervade the life of the school, and which is quite 
compatible with the relegation of dogmatic teaching to a fixed 
hour, is, we regretfully admit, beyond the power of the State to 
produce at command. Moral teaching it can, however, in any 
case require ; and for the rest it must rely on the general 
purport of its instructions to teachers and inspectors, but 
above all on the training which it gives to the teachers whom 
it rears for the public service, and to the inspectors whom it 
appoints to supervise them. It may be possible to inspire 
both these agents. 

We have indicated the true work of the people's school. 
It does not change its character at any stage of the school 
curriculum. Whether the child leaves at the age of ten, 
twelve, or fourteen, the instruction he receives is still sub- 
stantially the same as at the age of six. We believe that, so 
far, we carry with us Lord Norton, the Bishop of Exeter, and 
the majority of those who voted with them ; and we are quite 
certain that we have the assent of the few who have given 
time and study to the science and art of education. " Educa- 
tional enthusiasts," where they have any knowledge of the 



124 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

repressive conditions under which the common school is 
worked, desire no more than has been here sketched, and 
they will be content with no less. For such results our millions 
would indeed be well expended. 

But it is evident that to attain such results the Code of 
the Department must begin and end differently. It ought 
to lay down the material of instruction, and the course of 
intellectual discipline, through which the child is to be carried 
from year to year. Infants — that is to say, all under seven 
years of age — have to be trained to the use of their observing 
powers, in ways which we need not here specify in detail, 
but which are quite well understood. In the course of this 
training, their minds would be brought into healthful contact 
with sensible objects, and a broad foundation laid for sub- 
sequent real studies. Satisfaction should also be given to the 
cravings of imagination and sentiment by means of child- 
literature and with the help of music. The moral and religious 
impressions made on the heart at this early stage would never 
in future years be obliterated — would never, because they could 
never. Musical drill should be universal. The rudiments of 
reading, writing, and ciphering would not, of course, be omitted, 
but they would, we maintain, be more successfully taught if 
kept in subordination to the higher ends of intellectual and 
moral training. The successive years of school life simply 
repeat and expand and confirm the teachings of the infant 
school in ascending forms. The gradual additions to real 
knowledge made from year to year would, by the time the 
child had reached the sixth standard and the age of thirteen, 
have brought him into intelligent relations with Nature. Science 
in any form would be eschewed, but the more practical results 
of science would be intelligently apprehended. The Nature- 
knowledge to which we point would find its final expression 
in the primary school (at the age of thirteen or fourteen) in 
such admirable statements of what is now covered by the term 
" physical geography," as that of Professor Geikie, in his little 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 25 

shilling book on the subject ; while the laws of healthy living 
and the rudiments of an understanding of social and economic 
conditions would also find their place. Moral training, con- 
ducted in a religious spirit and with a religious aim more or 
less explicit, arises daily, nay hourly, in connection with such 
teaching : it also finds its opportunity in every act of school-life, 
when the master is competent for his important and delicate 
task. All this is quite practicable. Were it not practicable, 
popular education would be doomed to failure. With such a 
curriculum " specific " subjects, which bear the illusory appear- 
ance of being " secondary " subjects, would disappear, and the 
minds of the Lords would be tranquillized. There are indeed 
no specific subjects in education. Whatever it is impossible to 
work into the ordinary life of a primary or secondary school 
belongs to some other kind of institution. Specific subjects 
are for specific schools. Can anyone doubt that a scheme of 
education such as that sketched above would result in a far 
more wide-spread intelligence, a far deeper interest in scientific 
truth and literary expression, and a far finer moral spirit, than 
labouring against the grain in the dry teaching of words and 
technical details based on text-books constructed so as to 
teach the minimum which will earn a Government grant? 
And how much more acceptable to the true teacher would a 
code conceived in so liberal a spirit be ! 

If it be said that there is not time for all this, the answer 
is that it can all be accomplished simply by using properly 
selected reading books, and by the oral teaching of the master 
in extension of the suggestions of these books, if he is supplied 
with proper apparatus, and, above all, is himself properly 
trained. 

Consider for a moment how the time is now spent that is 
not devoted to such studies and training. In " getting up " 
history so called, and grammar and geography, in the teaching 
of which every demand made by the Department is right in 
the teeth of all sound educational principle. Go into a school 



126 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

where the children are learning history, and you will find a 
huge black-board covered with the names of kings and battle- 
fields, and an accumulation of dates that would provoke the 
laughter of every cultivated mind not depraved by working the 
system. As to grammar, we have more than once met little 
ragged boys on the road not more than ten years of age with 
MorelFs "Analysis" in their hands, and little girls of seven 
with their slates covered with lists of nouns ! As well might 
we ask them for lists of the fixed stars. This cannot be in 
accordance with sound educational principles and method, for 
it shocks our common sense. It was not from " educational 
theorists " that Government got such ideas of school work, but 
from "practical" men ! Even where the Department does by 
some lucky chance open a passage for the entrance of an 
educational principle, it converts it into an absurdity the 
moment it tries to manipulate it. For example, it is a recog- 
nized part of educational method that the learning of geography 
should start with a child's immediate parochial and county 
surroundings. This the Department seizes on, and imme- 
diately perverts it by requiring the children to waste their 
valuable time in getting up the names of every insignificant 
locality in the county, — localities which were unknown to the 
inspectors themselves, although they had traversed the county 
again and again in the discharge of their duties, until they 
specially got them up for the sole purpose of torturing children 
and turning the study of geography into ridicule. We speak 
what we do know. 

This is the way the precious hours of childhood are passed, 
and this is what we are paying for. And all to please whom ? 
We should like to know. Not certainly the school Boards, 
who care only for the Government gold, and watch, lynx-eyed, 
the teacher, lest he should cheat them out of a three -shilling 
pass. Not the schoolmaster, who, if he be an under-educated 
drudge, may be content, for he can conceive nothing higher 
than the mechanical ideal of the Department, but who, if he 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 27 

be a true teacher, with a living soul in him, is crushed with the 
dead weight of official demands ; or, if he smiles at all, smiles 
the smile of educational despair as he sees the inspector take 
up his pack and go. Not the children, who not many years 
ago were beginning to love school, but who now regard it as 
a task-shop and a thing to be avoided — one of the pains 
instead of one of the pleasures of their little lives — with what 
effect on their disposition to learn and obey may be conceived. 
Not the inspector : he cannot love his life of itinerating 
schedule-mongering, for he is an educated man. Not the 
Department : it only wants to get its honest pennyworth, and 
does not see how else to do it. 

We are very far from being blind to the fact that, spite of 
all this wasted energy, the mere collecting of children together 
and subjecting them to organization, obedience, and discipline, 
is a distinct gain to the community, and worth a good deal in 
the shape of taxation ; and we gladly recognize in the Code- 
improvements which introduce examination by classes and 
grants for discipline and intelligence, a distinct evidence of 
right intention. We still more gladly welcome the action of 
the present Chief-Inspector of Training Colleges in the direction 
of liberalizing the education of teachers. We are not blind 
to the groping good intentions of the Department. But the 
Code is vitiated throughout : it is rotten at the heart. The 
supposed necessity of maintaining the leading characteristic 
of the Revised Code of 1862 makes of the Code of 1880 a 
piece of patchwork. Two shillings a head for intelligence, 
and is. (yd. for organization and discipline ! As if any school 
should be regarded as a school at all where the conditions of 
organization and discipline are not fulfilled. " Discipline " 
includes morality : 6d. a head for every boy who has told not 
more than two lies per annum is the necessary sequel. 

So much for the school up to thirteen years of age. 
Children instructed on the lines which have been (necessarily 
in this place) very generally indicated, would go forth to sow 



128 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

and to reap and to mine and to weave, ignorant of electricity 
and magnetism, it is true, but with open eyes. They would be 
ignorant of the precise date of the death of Henry VI. 's grand- 
mother, but they would have in their souls some bright visions 
of British patriotism and valour, and some inspiring recollections 
of duty sublimely done. They would be ignorant of botany, 
but we hope that they would know something of the wayside 
flowers and trees : they would be ignorant of physiology, but 
we hope that they would know a good deal about the conditions 
of physical health : they would be ignorant of mathematics, 
but we hope that they would know something of weighing and 
measuring : they would be ignorant of Latin, French, and 
German, but they would, we hope, be able to read with 
pleasure, because with intelligence, the simpler prose and 
poetical literature of their own country, and to sing its songs 
and dance its dances. Their whole intellectual and spiritual 
life would have been started into activity, and the State's duty 
to the " masses " would have been discharged. Note also that 
if the elementary knowledge acquired at school has a direct 

A bearing on the ordinary and daily life of the people, we thereby 
secure a continuity between the education of school and the 
education of life ; and it is only in so far as this continuity is 
established that the boy becomes a wiser, a more intelligent, 
and more virtuous citizen than he would have been without 
the school. The material of school work must be of the same 
stuff as human life is made of. 

While the " Lords " then were substantially right in their 
assault on the Code in its present patchwork form, they were 
wrong in failing to see that it erred by defect much more than 
by excess, and, above all, that it erred by misreading popular 
education in respect both of substance and method. Neither 
Lord Norton nor the Bishop of Exeter, while complaining of 
the encouragement by the Department of what are called 
"secondary" subjects, indicated why those particular subjects 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 29 

were to be reserved for a higher class of schools than the 
primary. What is suitable in education for the sons of plough- 
men is, speaking generally, equally suitable for the sons of 
noblemen of the same age. Except in so far as foreign 
languages and mathematics are studied with a view to a 
profession, they are, as instruments of education, equally good 
or bad for all. The question is a social one. If boys can 
continue their education from thirteen to seventeen or eighteen, 
the subjects we have named are held, rightly or wrongly, to be 
the best discipline for them, and an indispensable preparation 
for the studies of a university and for the higher walks of the 
Public Service. But neither on grounds of discipline nor of 
utility can the introduction of such subjects be justified, if circum- 
stances prevent their being prosecuted beyond the initial stages ; 
and as, probably, ninety-five per cent, of the pupils of primary 
schools must cease to attend school at thirteen at latest, it may 
be fairly argued that their attention should be confined to 
subjects having a more direct relation to their future lives. 

But what of the five per cent, of superior organization? 
Brains are not confined to a class. It is of far more importance 
to the well-being of the State and to the position it is to hold 
relatively to other communities, that the finer spirits should be 
educated out of the sphere in which they have been born, than 
it is to the individuals themselves. The country cannot afford 
to waste brain-power on hedging and ditching. And there is 
another and a potent consideration. Social equality is a dream, 
and communism is an injustice, if not a crime ; but it is not only 
within the power of the State, but incumbent on it, to make a 
passage from one class to another and a higher, at least possible. 
Scotland is liberal in politics, but we cannot imagine it be- 
coming socialistic, and this simply because the finer and more 
ambitious spirits have a career opened to them. The path 
they have to traverse may be rough, and it is right it should be 
so ; but it is at least practicable. The potential mental energy 
of the country is not dammed up. Outlets are provided, and 
l. l. 9 



130 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

no boy can say that he has been unjustly used. Were the 
stronger spirits among the poorer classes north of the Tweed 
repressed — crushed down by an educational organization sepa- 
rating the lower from the upper in perpetuity, the nation would 
ere long hear of it to its cost. It would have to pay a much 
higher price than the trifling addition to taxation which edu- 
cation continued in the primary school beyond the age of 
thirteen demands. On grounds, then, quite apart from that 
of Christian humanity, provision ought to be made for the 
construction of the "ladder." In primary schools, accordingly, 
the Department is supremely right in encouraging more advanced 
teaching. Whether this encouragement should take the whole- 
some form of special grants to teachers to meet an equal grant 
from the local board, or the trading form of capitation payments 
in accordance with the genius of a nation of shopkeepers, is 
not wholly a matter of detail. The curriculum of study would 
be probably best determined by the local authorities, and should 
in any case be a curriculum, and continue till a boy is fifteen. 
By that time the special line of activity for which he is fitted 
would have declared itself, and if he still gave high promise, 
an exhibition should carry him to a " real " or " classical " high 
school. Few might get so far ; but none could say that the 
machinery of society was so contrived as to block the way to 
any of Her Majesty's subjects and deny them free scope for 
their powers. What is of much more importance, ten would 
receive the benefit of the more advanced instruction for one 
who rose out of his social class : these would carry into their 
daily work a higher intelligence, and so leaven the lower stratum 
of society. 

The establishment of certain exhibitions at county schools, 
open to country boys, may be of service to the sons of 
clergymen and medical practitioners, and the larger farmers ; 
but it can never solve the question of the secondary instruction 
of the poor. The son of the poor man would soon find these 
advantages taken out of his hands by the lower middle-class, 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 131 

whose domestic habits and means enable them to prepare their 
children for competition, while the peasant's son is labouring 
under domestic difficulties. Moreover, it is quite open to 
question whether such a system of connecting country with 
county schools would be salutary in its effects. It is certainly 
desirable to open a path for very promising boys and girls ; but 
even were this path opened and strictly reserved for the peasant 
poor, only one boy probably in every three or four years would 
tread it, and the district from which he came would be only 
indirectly and slightly benefited. The true course, we repeat, 
is to provide for the intellectual and moral life of the people's 
schools up to the age of fifteen. By such provision the whole 
parish will be benefited, and a fair proportion of thoroughly 
intelligent citizens added to the agricultural and artisan class, 
not removed out of it. In the course of such advanced 
primary instruction the boy born for what is conventionally 
considered to be a higher line of life (in any case a life where 
mental power is more needed) would mark himself out from 
his fellows in ways that would be unmistakable. The main 
purpose of these advanced classes, however, would not be the 
discovery of such boys or girls, but the promotion of the 
intelligence of the parish itself, and the raising of the body 
of the people out of their cloddish indifference to all save 
physical requirements, thereby making them fitter occupants of 
the church pew and the village reading-room. 

In small towns and populous places the higher classes of 
the primary school, to which we have referred, would naturally 
separate themselves from the primary school and specialize 
themselves into Higher-grade schools which carried the in- 
struction of boys and girls still further ; and this simply because 
in such localities a larger number of parents can afford to 
maintain their children after the age of fourteen or fifteen 
without the aid of their labour. It is surely not necessary in 
these days to argue for the increase and organization of schools 
of this class. The various occupations of life require the 

9—2 



132 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

services of men and women who have, as boys and girls, gone 
through a much more prolonged education than can be ob- 
tained even at the best primary schools ; and, apart from this, 
the tone of provincial, and consequently of national, life must 
always be low, and its aims narrow and contemptible, where 
such schools do not exist. Permissive power should be given 
to England, in terms similar to those of the Scottish Education 
Act of 1878, to institute such schools. This for a time might 
suffice until a Minister of Public Instruction or (better) an 
Educational Council could take the matter in hand. In all 
localities so provided, the primary school should not carry its 
instruction beyond the age of thirteen, and this, if for no other 
reasons, because it would be a waste of power to do so. It 
will scarcely be maintained that the encouragement (not the 
enforcement) of advanced primary instruction in country 
districts could affect the institution of high schools situated in 
fit localities. In any case it would scarcely be just to sacrifice 
the children of the county to those of the county-town. The 
object is always to get as much educational work done as can 
be accomplished with the means at our disposal, and without 
waste of power. 

We often hear it said that the middle classes should pay 
for their own education, and that they are in many cases now 
taking advantage of Board, and other primary, schools con- 
ducted under the Government fee-maximum of ninepence per 
week. But we are not aware that the middle classes them- 
selves complain of this. On the contrary, they say, Why are 
we to pay for the education of the operative classes, and also 
for our own schools ? May we not share in the educational 
machinery which our own self-imposed rates and imperial 
taxation provide ? Is a child to be excluded from a country 
school because his father farms 100 acres? If not, then 200? 
Or, at what point are we to draw the line ? Is it not enough 
to rest satisfied with the natural operation of social causes, 
feeling well assured that as soon as a man has money enough 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 133 

he will seek on social grounds to separate his children from 
the mass? What is applicable to the country is equally 
applicable to the town. It is only men that are raised far 
above the struggle for a livelihood and who have exaggerated 
notions of the wealth of the middle class, who venture to 
complain of the small fee paid by those who, they imagine, 
are quite competent to provide instruction for themselves 
without the aid of rates. Those families of the middle class, 
that send their children to Board schools, do so only because 
they cannot help it ; and those who talk of the unfair advantage 
the middle class seem to be taking are really ignorant of their 
circumstances, and of the bitter secret struggle of the men and 
women who bear themselves bravely in the face of the world in 
the maintenance of what is dear to them (and fortunately so, 
because important to the State) — their " position." And who 
are they that would cast a stone at their poorer neighbours ? 
The charity of the past provides them with Eton and Oxford, 
Rugby, and Cambridge. We may rest assured that if we once 
have high schools in all our important centres, we may safely 
leave the relation of the lower middle-class population to 
State-aided primary schools to settle itself; and if at present, 
under shelter of the Education Department, a few families seek 
in such schools advanced instruction which would be otherwise 
quite inaccessible, we should rather be glad of this, and accept 
it as a clear indication that more is wanted than the State has 
yet provided. 

Meanwhile, it would be well to encourage in every way the 
disposition of the Department to extend the education of 
primary schools to the age of fifteen, and at the same time to 
give them powers to refuse grants, beyond the sixth standard, 
to schools situated in localities already provided with high 
schools accessible to the poorer class of promising pupils and 
suited to the wants of the lower middle class. But in all cases 
where the Department recognizes instruction to the age of 
fifteen, they should, we think, simply test the education given, 



134 THE GENERAL FUNCTION 

allowing each locality to find out for itself what it most needs 
or desires. 

We are not prepared to assent to the broad general pro- 
position that the State is bound to educate all its citizens in 
the sense of promoting the culture of each individual. On 
the contrary, it is more strictly correct to say that the 
State's function to the individual is discharged if it leaves 
him as free as possible, and that, in charging itself with 
education, it does so for State ends alone — in the interests, 
that is to say, of the commonwealth as a whole. It is quite 
entitled, therefore, to demand efficiency in return for the 
expenditure it resolves upon. With a view to this it must 
ultimately, through some machinery or other, however decen- 
tralized, control the schools, control the training of teachers, 
and control the inspectors. But it must do this wisely, and on 
the sure foundation of educational principle. Its Code must 
not be an aggregate of dislocated suggestions tied together by 
no unity of purpose, but only by the thread that stitches the 
leaves together ; nor must it shock the common-sense of the 
community by a vain show of science falsely so called. 

Neither in the course of instruction we have slightly 
sketched, nor in the continuance of that course beyond the 
sixth standard, is there anything beyond the reach of the 
Department even as it stands. Trained teachers are, as a 
whole, quite competent for the task if they are encouraged to 
undertake it, the inspectors are all men of education and 
ability, and no one questions the efficiency of the Department 
itself to do what it thinks worth the doing. The weakest link 
in the chain of agencies is doubtless the teacher, but this 
instrument also is under the all-powerful hand of the Whitehall 
officials. For it is the Department that really controls the 
Training Colleges, while deftly managing to get gratuitous ad- 
ministration and responsibility for twenty-five per cent, of what 
is properly State expenditure, out of the various " Authorities " 
in exchange for an almost illusory right of management. But 



OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 135 

this is a large question, and we shall not enter on it here. 
We would only say, that if popular education means what we 
think it means, the training of teachers is a matter of prime 
importance. If it means what Lord Sherbrooke thinks it 
means, then the arguments urged for expending public money 
on training fall to the ground, the present remuneration given 
to teachers is absurdly extravagant, and their claim to social 
recognition, in consequence of their presumed high social 
function, disappears. Female ex-pupil teachers can do all the 
national work that Lord Sherbrooke desires to see done ; and 
if there be difficulty as to their maintaining discipline in boys' 
schools, this difficulty could be easily overcome by requiring 
the frequent presence of the local policeman. 

We conclude then that while more advanced teaching and 
the so-called " higher subjects " have no place in the primary 
education either of poor or rich, they have an easily defined 
place up to the age of fifteen in the primary school, and that, in 
so far as the Department is feeling its way towards this result, 
it is in accord with all the best feeling of the country, and 
promoting the ends which a national educational system is 
intended to subserve. We are glad to think that there is no 
fear that the present heads of the Department will fail in 
carrying out this liberal view of their duties. Both Lord 
Spencer and Mr Mundella have at Sheffield strongly expressed 
their opinion that the spread of elementary education neces- 
sarily produces the desire for higher instruction, to which "all 
the children of the country " have a claim " according to their 
needs, capacities, and prospects"; and further, that it is the 
duty of the State to provide such instruction, "not only 
thoroughly, but generously and with an unstinting hand." 
The Duke of Argyll has shown, moreover, and I also am in a 
position to answer for it, that in Scottish schools attention to 
higher instruction has not resulted in the neglect of the general 
instruction of the main body of the school. As a mere matter 
of fact, the blue-books nowhere show so high a percentage in 



136 GENERAL FUNCTION OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 

the ordinary subjects of the Code as in those parts of Scotland 
where instruction is carried furthest. Nay, it is found that the 
existence of advanced classes in public schools has a stimulating 
effect on the intelligence of the whole school, and thus all are 
gainers — master and pupils alike. The same system rightly 
understood and applied would produce similar results else- 
where. A higher and more intelligent spirit would then arise 
in all our public schools, and Lord Sherbrooke would have no 
longer any reason to complain that a boy who had passed the 
sixth standard could not read satisfactorily. If he and his 
fellow Peers interested in education would direct their attention 
to the improvement of the Code in respect both of substance 
and form, they would further the cause which they have no 
doubt at heart, far more than by the mere negative and 
uninstructed criticism in which they indulged during the recent 
debate in the House of Lords. 

Note. The Code for Scotland now meets almost all the 
demands made in the above paper, and that for England is 
following on the same lines (1901). 



137 



VII. 

LIBERAL EDUCATION IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 . 

When your Secretary did me the honour to ask me to address 
you on this annual occasion I had some difficulty in finding a 
text ; but as soon as I received a copy of your Annual Report, 
my difficulty was removed. This Council of Education I found 
exists to co-operate with the School Board generally, and chiefly 
to promote the advanced instruction of the masses of the 
people. It seemed to me accordingly to be not inappropriate, 
either to the function I am now discharging, to the objects of 
this Council, or to the circumstances of the time, to say a word 
in defence of what I conceive to be the true purpose of the 
primary school in special relation to the advanced instruction 
of the people, technical and literary. 

It would almost appear from public meetings held in 
London, and from the action taken by some Chambers of 
Commerce, that young clerks can neither write nor count, and 
are wholly ignorant of the objects and ways of commerce. It 
has also been said that the lower class of commercial instru- 
ments — office boys — do not exhibit as much intelligence and 
sense of duty as did those of their predecessors twenty years 
ago, who had received such instruction as was then available. 
Again, we have the constantly recurring demand for the 
technical instruction of our artisans. 

1 Delivered before the Liverpool Council of Education, 1888. 



138 LIBERAL EDUCATION 

Now, if the remedy for these defects is the institution of 
secondary schools of commercial and of technical instruction 
for boys who, at the age of thirteen, have got all that the 
primary school can give them, we could not but wish success 
to the movement ; but I should still contend that such schools 
would not succeed in giving either the artisan or the clerk that 
ability to cope with changing circumstances which would keep 
England in the van of the industry and commerce of the world; 
and this because the instruction which it is proposed to give in 
them is too narrow and specialized. We have to keep steadily 
before us the education of men as men and as citizens, if we 
are really to attain the objects of the technical specialists 
themselves. By so doing, we shall make this life more worth 
living for the individual, while fitting him better for his ever- 
extending duties in a democratic and industrial society. 

Professor Huxley has said that no one can yet define 
technical instruction. But it seems to me that the definition, 
in general terms at least, is easy enough. Technical instruction 
is instruction with a view to gaining a living in some specific 
department of industry, or to discharging some specific social 
function. A seminary for young men, devoted to theological 
instruction and to the inculcation of the proper way of preaching 
and of managing a parish, would be a technical school for the 
ministry of the Church. So with a medical school, or a teachers' 
school, or a lawyers' school. We call these schools " pro- 
fessional " : strictly speaking they are technical ; but it is, 
doubtless, better to restrict the term " technical " to instruction 
which fits a man, not for a social function in the liberal sense, 
but for dealing with those material things and agencies which 
form the necessary basis of the individual life as well as of 
society at large, while "liberal" instruction, on the other hand, 
is education with a view to living a life — the life of a rational 
being and a good citizen. 

No one can have a word to say against technical instruction 



IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 39 

in its own place. Technical schools, indeed, are destined, if 
organized on a liberal basis, to be to the lower half of the 
middle class what high schools, grammar schools, and our 
great public schools are to the upper half, and we do well 
to promote them for the education of boys above thirteen years 
of age. Technical Colleges, again, must ere long discharge the 
function of Industrial Universities. But it is constantly the 
duty of the professed educationalist to resist popular ideas, 
and to insist on a reasonable view being taken of every fresh 
educational panacea. We are now, it seems to me, threatened 
with an advancing tide of technical instruction, which aims at 
swallowing up all other educational agencies. Scotland has 
got a Technical School Act; England is about to have one. 
In so far as these Acts can be safely utilized by School Boards, 
it will be in the direction probably of evening schools for 
apprentices, and of adding a higher department to a few of the 
existing day schools, where those who have passed the sixth 
standard, and have not yet entered on apprenticeship, may 
assemble to receive instruction of a more or less specific 
character. Such schools will be a most important addition to 
the educational machinery of this city and other centres of 
industry, and will give definite character and aim to one of the 
objects of this Council of Education. But assuredly they will 
fail to be educative in the best sense, unless they are so 
organized as to include commercial subjects, and to give some 
place to literature, music, and so forth, as well as to elementary 
science and manual work. It is proposed by some to make 
such secondary schools for the people purely technical. Now 
it is against this that I protest in the interests of the secondary 
education of the artisan and lower middle classes themselves. 

But still worse awaits us : attempts have been made to 
capture even the Primary School, which surely ought to be 
consecrated to liberal education. Schemes have been mooted 
for technicalising (so to speak) the fifth and sixth standards in 



140 LIBERAL EDUCATION 

the Board Schools and for giving workshop instruction in them 
of a distinctively industrial character. Such movements are to 
be resisted, nay, I would almost say resented, in the highest 
interests of the people. Nor is this all ; for not content with 
technical instruction, which, however defective when taken alone, 
yet certainly involves a certain amount of intellectual training, we 
are further threatened from America with an organized system 
of manual instruction for primary schools which gives, taken by 
itself, the minimum of mental training. Now, when boys have 
left the primary school, and have entered upon a technical 
course, manual training must, of course, be a part of this ; for 
although it is true that a boy will never really learn his trade 
save in a workshop, it is yet necessary to include, as part of 
a technical school, shops for carpentering, metal turning, &c, 
in order to keep the instruction given in the school in close 
relation with its practical aim. But in the primary school, as 
distinct from the professed technical school, workshops and 
manual occupation are just as necessary as gymnasiums — 
neither more nor less. They belong to the department of 
organized recreation at this stage of a boy's life, rather than 
to that of organized instruction ; and in a climate like ours, 
carpenters' sheds for boys above 1 1 years of age, and covered 
gymnasiums for all, should be a part of the equipment of every 
school, primary and secondary alike. Hand-work, I readily 
admit, though in itself giving the minimum of intellectual 
training, gives all that certain minds are capable of receiving, 
and, in all other cases, it reacts upon the intelligence, and gives 
a certain solidity to the purely intellectual and moral instruction 
of a school. In fact, we may say, generally, that the method 
of teaching any subject whatsoever, is never adequate until 
the fingers have been in some way brought into requisition 
in connection with it. In the manual work of drawing, for 
example, we have an educational instrument which trains both 
hand and eye, and insensibly contributes to the general educa- 
tion of a boy much more than is even yet understood. 



IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 141 

Hand-work, then, in so far as it includes drawing, and, in the 
case of girls, needlework and cooking, all educationalists, I 
presume, advocate in the primary school : nor less would they 
gladly see carpenters' sheds and gymnasiums as places devoted 
to strenuous and regulated idleness. 

But when we are asked to give to carpentering a certain 
portion of the time now devoted to geography, history, reading, 
and so forth, we object. Those who believe that the distinction 
between man and monkey does not depend on the develop- 
ment of the thumb, are driven to protest in the name of the 
distinctively human in man. Can we be expected even to 
restrain our laughter when we see it stated by a hand-enthusiast 
in America that one hour of carpentering will do more for a 
boy's intellect than three hours of Sophocles ? If the spirit of 
man can be educated through his fingers, it is a pity that Plato 
and Shakspere ever wrote and Christ ever taught. The thumb 
educationalists must be commanded to keep their place ; and, 
along with them, those technical educationalists who would 
take forcible possession of the primary school, and substitute 
science (so-called) in place of more humane and humanising 
studies. If in the technical schools, to which a Technical 
Schools Bill will lead, literature, music, and history ought to 
find an honourable place, in order to make them the secondary 
schools of the artisan and lower middle class, how much more 
do these subjects demand protection in the primary school ? 
Technical instruction, pure and simple, can never educate ; 
at best, it can only contribute to education. The Technical has 
in view the gaining of a living : Education properly understood 
has in view life. We " do not live by bread alone, but by the 
Word," that is to say by thought on human life, conduct, 
and destiny, conveyed in apt language. What shall it profit 
England, I should like to know, if she gain the whole world — 
that is to say, drive all other nations out of the field of neutral 
markets — and "lose her own soul"? The operative of England 
is not to be trained merely to be a useful tool in the hands 



142 LIBERAL EDUCATION 

of the holders of capital. He has to earn a living, no doubt, 
but he has also to live a life — the life of a rational and im- 
mortal spirit. It is still generally held that we must have 
humanistic — that is to say, literary, historical, economical, 
and religious teaching in the secondary school : much more, 
it seems to me, must we have it in the primary school, 
if the masses of the people are to be put on the right 
way. 

Again, one of the aims of this Liverpool Council is to keep 
children as long at school as possible, and so to begin the 
secondary or advanced education of the children of the poorer 
sections of the population. But the artisan, and even a large 
proportion of the middle, class cannot take advantage of your 
liberal offer owing to social necessities. They can receive 
their secondary education only through the experience and 
opportunities of life. The opening of people's parks, of 
playing-fields, public baths, of art galleries, of cheap concerts, 
of free libraries, of evening lectures, and the capping of the 
whole with cheap literature and with University Colleges (as 
here in Liverpool), are the opportunities now growing up in 
our great centres of population ; and that not too soon. But 
all these things will fail to meet our expectations, if boys and 
girls have not been put on the right way when young. The 
artisan will remain outside these agencies, just as he too often, 
unhappily, remains outside the Churches. He will not adopt 
them into his daily life and make them an integral part of that. 
If he is to do so, I repeat, the primary school, and above all 
the advanced classes of the primary school, must put him, 
when yet a boy, on the right way. That right way is the way 
of the humanities, and the way of the humanities is paved with 
literature, history, ethics, religion, art — all that is humanising, 
all that makes a citizen a man and not merely a work-man. 
In short, the education of the primary school must, like that 
of the secondary school, be liberal and humanising, and 



IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL I43 

prepare for the general conduct and rational enjoyment of 
life, not for any specific department of labour. 

To the primary teacher, then, I would say : " While boys 
and girls must be largely trained, by means of object-lessons, 
geography, arithmetic, and always on a distinct realistic basis, 
the teaching being closely practical, your leading idea, your 
constant purpose (spite of codes and all their demands), must 
be the moralising and humanising of the boys and girls under 
your charge." Let us face the fact that religion is really not at 
present in its proper place in our schools, because theologians 
cannot agree. While theologians quarrel,- the people may 
perish. I feel very deeply, that, until these quarrels are settled, 
it becomes more than ever necessary that humanising and 
ethical aims should in our minds be paramount. Knowledge 
is not everything. Life is better. If the apprentice lad does 
his work honestly and as to God, if he is kindly and gracious 
and civil in his family and social relations, if he seeks the 
pleasures of society and song, and brings a pleasant temper 
and a gracious countenance to the fireside, if in short, he is 
leading the life of a rational and religious being, and so 
promoting the sum of human happiness, he is a worthy 
member of the commonwealth. Such a youth is the best 
possible product of school-life. But if we do not, or, owing 
to code restrictions, cannot, lay such a foundation as will rear 
this edifice of a true man, then all I have to say is, the school 
has lost its road. It is an expensive machine, turning out 
machine-made articles, and not the hand-work into which is 
put the honest endeavour of an earnest mind, the love and 
inspiration of the moral artist. 

The education of the primary school, I have said, must 
be liberal and humanising. How is it to be made so ? The 
answer is easy : by having a liberal and humane mind at its 
head, skilled in methods, instinct with ethical purpose. 
Religious teaching is at a discount at present, I have said, 
but nobody prevents the teacher telling the Gospel story, and 



144 LIBERAL EDUCATION 

reading, as a father might with his children, its simple records 
in such a way as to touch the hearts and imaginations of his 
pupils. Then there is literature. In the rich stores of our 
country there can be no difficulty in finding materials to 
supersede, or at least to supplement, the barren teachings 
of our school-books. Were I a teacher, I should find in such 
materials the means of establishing between myself and my 
scholars that sympathetic bond which is the source of all true 
power over the human mind, because it is spiritual power. 
I should like to sit down, when time and circumstance were 
favourable, and read with them, and to them, pieces which 
stir emotion in the heart of old and young alike. Such child- 
pieces, for example, as this, by Blake, poet and artist, would, 
I think, yield fruit both in the present and the after time : — 

"Little lamb, who made thee? 
Dost thou know who made thee, 
Gave thee life and bid thee feed 
By the stream and o'er the mead; 
Gave thee clothing of delight, 
Softest clothing, woolly, bright ; 
Gave thee such a tender voice, 
Making all the vales rejoice? 
Little lamb, who made thee? 
Dost thou know who made thee? 
Little lamb, I'll tell thee, 
Little lamb, I'll tell thee. 
He is called by thy name, 
For He calls himself a lamb: 
He is meek and He is mild, 
He became a little child. 
I a child and thou a lamb, 
We are called by His name, 
Little lamb, God bless thee, 
Little lamb, God bless thee." 

This is literature, simple though it be. Can the child 
resist it? Certainly not, if the teacher feels it. England is 
full of child-literature even better than this, suited to every 



IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 145 

child-stage of life. The poets of England have been generous 
in their gifts to children. Spelling is important, grammar is 
important, but not so important as the food that maintains the 
very life of the soul. Much of our teaching may evaporate, 
but the impressions of the good which we make by means 
of the beautiful, will never evaporate. The teachings of the 
heart and the imagination remain for ever. 

It is by such means as I have indicated that we may hope 
to rear a population captivated by moral and religious truth, 
and disdainful of all meaner forms of pleasure ; it is by such 
means that the immortal spirit is taught to shine, even "through 
a simple rustic garb's disguise, and through the impediment of 
rural cares." The school, we are told, is to fit for the larger 
school of life. True ; but does life consist only of a struggle 
for the satisfaction of material wants ? Are man's relations to 
the spiritual not life? 

"The world is too much with us: late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." 

Nor is the moral and spiritual life, which it is the business of 
the school to evoke, the least potent element in the equipment 
for the struggle of each passing day and the cheerful acceptance 
by each of us of our special burdens. It is the moral element 
in man that supplies the source of power for working the 
hammer or the loom to the best effect. 

Let, then, the intellectual and spiritual ideal of the school 
be fixed, let the master be himself inspired with that ideal, and 
then allowed freely to work for this, and the result will be a 
population, not of mere working men, but of men who can live 
and enjoy life, as well as toil intelligently for a living. 

What we as educationalists desire to accomplish, and that 
even in the department of industries and commerce, is to raise 
the standard of national life. To accomplish this we must not 
only quicken the general intelligence of boys and girls but we 
must rely, mainly, on the training of the humanity in them. 

L. l. 10 



146 LIBERAL EDUCATION 

No man who takes a broad view of education can regret to see 
the growth of physical science as an educational agency. The 
study of Nature had been for long left out in the cold, and it 
was inevitable that it should make importunate demands for 
admission and for an honourable place at the scholastic hearth. 
But it must not be allowed to drive the literary and the 
ethical from their supreme place. Even science itself becomes 
truly educative in the highest sense, only when it is transfigured 
by imagination and touched by moral emotion. It is the 
spiritual in man, not the logical understanding, which to 
Nature 

"Adds the gleam, 
The light that never was on sea or land, 
The consecration and the poet's dream." 

To the popular eye and to the eye of Herschel alike, the starry 
heavens are but so much dead matter if they do not light the 
path of the sublime, and raise the soul of man above the petty 
and transitory. " The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
the firmament showeth forth His handiwork." It is only the 
poetic ear that can hear " the silence that is in the starry sky." 
When this dependence of science itself on the alchemy of 
thought for its true significance is clearly seen, the present 
imperious claims of its votaries will be abated. There is an 
ebb and a flow in all social questions, but the time for the ebb 
of the scientific tide is not yet. Depend upon it, it is by the 
study neither of the molecule nor of the crayfish, but of the 
thoughts and deeds of epochs now gone that we ourselves truly 
understand ourselves. The dead generations are in truth our 
dead selves from which we rise to higher things. By the past 
we live. You and I are old men; thousands of years have 
passed over our heads. By the help of science alone, I admit, 
each man may in these days start afresh for himself, and 
succeed in correlating himself and his material needs with his 
environment, but assuredly he cannot attain to his full stature 
as man save by first spreading his roots deep and wide into 



IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 147 

the soil which is enriched by the deeds and thoughts of his 
forerunners. 

I am not depreciating scientific and technical instruction ; 
I wish simply to look at it in the light of educational principles 
and to assign it its due place in the formation of character, 
and the fitting of a man for the duties and the enjoyment 
of this world. I hold that even in the primary school it is 
quite possible to meet all reasonable demands which our 
commerce and our skilled industries can make on us and 
yet subordinate all to the great educative aim. Only let 
realistic subjects — everything that comes under the head of 
Nature-knowledge — have their foundations laid in the primary 
school as a part of general education. Above all, let all 
subjects be taught with direct reference to use. This it is 
which makes geography and arithmetic alive — nay, moralises 
them — because it brings them into relation with the hard facts 
and the daily work of life. By this kind of teaching we shall, 
by the help of our humanistic instruction, to which our geo- 
graphy and history and arithmetic will always play up, turn out 
the youth of the country to do their part, when we leave the 
stage, with living hearts, open eyes, and active intelligences ; 
and, above all, with that moral steadfastness which all men 
need when they "fall upon the thorns of life." We shall 
certainly not accomplish this educative result if we let bread- 
earning subjects supersede the liberal, the humanistic. On the 
other hand, that, at this time of day, we should pretend to 
educate our youth divorced from Nature and its teachings, and 
without specific reference to practical life, is simply absurd. 
All I wish to insist on is that the root of the matter is not in 
the various sciences of Nature, but in the ethical purpose of 
human existence. Man is capable of ideas and ideals. To 
say that his life is in the infinite is not a merely rhetorical 
utterance ; but sober fact. He is not simply the aristocrat 
of the monkey-tribe, but something far other and better. Give 
me a man with an intelligent mind and with a moral purpose 



148 LIBERAL EDUCATION 

in life — honest in his resolves, honourable in his aims — and I 
will guarantee you in that man the best manufacturer, the best 
merchant, the best weaver, the best engineer, the best plumber, 
given the necessary amount of knowledge of his business. I 
will guarantee you also against a " railway king " or a shoddy 
millionaire. To technical and scientific knowledge the words 
of the Laureate are even more closely applicable than to 
knowledge in general : — 

* * * "Let her know her place — 
She is the second, not the first. 

A higher hand must make her mild, 

If all be not in vain; and guide 

Her footsteps, moving side by side 
With Wisdom, like the younger child." 

As with scientific and technical instruction so with manual 
work in schools : let it be subsidiary to the greater end ; in 
brief, let it not be work at all, but play. The son of the poor 
man has to buckle himself to labour soon enough. Do not 
evade the Factory Acts by turning the primary school into 
a factory of factory-hands. It is a factory of minds, not of 
hands ; if it be not this, let it go ! 

The primary school, then, you will see I regard as being, 
no less than the secondary, the abode of humanism. Its aim 
is liberal education. The classical master of our great public 
schools will toss his head at this and ask : " How is it possible 
that the 'common school' should give a liberal education?" 
I may use my natural privilege as a Scotsman and respond by 
asking him another question : " What is a liberal education ? 
What do you think education is ? What does it aim at ? " By 
the time he has answered these questions he will find that in 
the primary school, properly understood, must be laid the 
foundation firm and sure of all liberal education. "To the 
poor the Gospel is preached." The word humanism, which 
has for centuries been the equivalent for a liberal education, 



IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL I49 

has not changed its true meaning, but it has, in these modern 
times, changed, or, rather, I should say multiplied, its instru- 
ments, while the secondary schoolmaster of a certain type, all 
unwitting of the change, has been left high and dry on the 
shore of the sixteenth century. Latin and Greek were once 
the only possible vehicles of liberal education, because they 
alone contained science, literature, and great moral examples 
for the modern world. And I would still say to every man 
who has the time " Study these," for in that antique world are 
to be found, to use Shelley's words, 

"Harmonies of wisdom and of song, 
And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair." 

The fortress of antiquity must be held if our modern life is not 
to be overrun by the Philistine. But the campaign of the army 
of humanity has now to be conducted chiefly with weapons 
which our own immediate forefathers have forged. The fire 
lighted at the altars of Greece, having first burned with a 
dazzling brilliancy in Italy, crossed the Alps and, fed by Celtic 
ardour and moderated by Teutonic soberness, illumined the 
nations. The result has been modern literatures and a 
Christianised humanism, whose proper place is not merely 
the halls of universities, but the nurseries and schools of our 
children. 

I would turn to another question which is at present the 
theme (like technical instruction) of platform orators. 

By means of bursaries we provide for the advancement 
of clever boys who aim at professional work. But the ladder, 
which is to lead from the gutter to a university fellowship, has 
small interest for the educationalist compared to the ladder 
which is to lead from the gutter to a good and honourable life 
as a man and a citizen. It is not the higher education and 
success in life of this or that boy which can long arrest our 
attention. It is the higher education of the people as a whole. 
Whatever we do in education, this in all nations and in all 



150 LIBERAL EDUCATION 

periods of history must l?e done — this, namely — we must 
educate the centre of political power. In this democratic 
country that centre is now the artisan class — the aristocracy of 
the millions of the wage-earners. These, when they leave the 
primary school, have to be brought in increasing numbers 
within the circle of intellectual and moral interests. And this 
is to be done by increasing the number of those who stay at 
school till they have passed the sixth standard, by evening 
continuation schools, by organized courses of lectures, by art- 
galleries, by music-halls of the right sort, nay also by regulated 
dancing saloons ; and finally by our churches, when these have 
learned the secret of touching the heart, and speaking the 
language, of the working man. That scientific lectures (if 
given, not by what are called "science masters," but by 
masters of science) can attract and elevate has been proved by 
the University Extension Schemes ; but all that the masses of 
the people can absorb of this kind of instruction is very 
limited. Not so with humanistic subjects — these have an 
infinite variety which " custom cannot stale." History, political 
science, economics, literature, art, religion, offer themselves. 
They promise enjoyment to the mind ; and it is only through 
what they enjoy, as a relief from toil and harassment, that men, 
working hard from morning to evening, can be permanently 
expected to seek knowledge. It is this general and diffused 
education of the masses that can alone interest the true 
educationalists ; the " ladder from the gutter to a fellowship " 
is a quite secondary matter, and has a touch of vulgarity about it. 
The subjects I have named give, I say, enjoyment and 
recreation, and while they do so, they at the same time nurture, 
feed, elevate, and form. The interest of such subjects also is 
lasting, for they are in intimate relation to the present conduct 
of life and to the future destiny of each man. The doctrine of 
the anthropoid ape and adaptation to environment is played 
out. It is not the descent of man but the ascent of man we 
have to think of. Much retrospect to the monkey out of which 



IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 151 

we have been evolved is not satisfying. A man must be a 
biological expert to go into intellectual ecstasies over that. 
"Let the ape and tiger die." Given due preparation in 
boyhood, and you will then find a potent auxiliary in the work 
of education in the artisan himself, when once he has entered 
on the duties of life. For, strange to say, his mind is commonly 
more open and more eager for fresh intellectual food than that 
of the college don or the scientific specialist. There is a 
freedom from prejudice and a naive simplicity of receptiveness 
about him. Explain the fact as you may, it is a fact. We may 
have great faith in the British working man and in his power to 
work out his own educational salvation when the opportunity 
is provided, if only we have given him a fair start in the 
people's school, and humanised him there. He is of a good 
breed. 

Why, indeed, should he not achieve for himself even 
" culture " ? What this precisely may be it is not easy to say. 
It certainly is not the exclusive property of academic minds. 
I have elsewhere defined it as a disposition to know things and 
to think about things above our own petty personal interests 
and outside our particular department of work, combined with 
a love for art forms, a feeling for the historical past out of 
which we have come, all supported by what may be called an 
ethical habit of mind. Now all this is, in its essence at least, 
quite within the reach of the operative classes ; and some 
individuals among them are at this moment more truly cultured 
than many of the wealthy, and not a few of the academic, 
class. Many of the latter are too apt to think that culture 
means scholarly acquisition or literary expertncss, and not 
character, intellectual openness, and aesthetic appreciation. 

Let us, then, see to it that every citizen has his opportunity 
given to him, by a liberal education in the primary school, to 
grow to this true manhood, to this genuine culture, in remote 
glens as well as in crowded cities. There is now no insuperable 
difficulty in this. What a depressing thought for every man 



152 LIBERAL EDUCATION 

who is interested in the advancement of society if he had to 
confess that all that shapes the spirit of man to the highest 
issues is for ever beyond the reach of the masses of mankind 
— that education, in the best sense, is for the few. There are 
still some — far too many, it is true — who are, unhappily, in 
such daily anxiety as to the means of living that they have no 
time to live, and there will always be a certain number who, 
with every opportunity that could be given, will remain dull, 
obtuse, ignorant, evil : and this in all ranks of society. The 
devil, like the poor, we shall have always with us, I suspect ; 
but we must do our best to fight him, or it, under whatever 
grammatical gender modern enlightenment may classify the 
dire reality. We work in the hope that the number of those 
outside the pale of a true civilization may grow less and less as 
the generations pass ; and we already have reached this great 
and unprecedented position that we are now able to address 
ten for one whom we could so have addressed thirty years ago, 
inviting them to come and drink of the fountains of knowledge, 
no less than of the waters of life, freely. 

To sum up in a sentence or two : What I have chiefly 
desired to impress upon you is that the primary, even more 
than the secondary school, must be sacred to the humanistic in 
education ; and, further, that realistic subjects should be so 
practically taught as to relate them to the uses and enjoyment 
of life, and in this way contribute to humanistic education. 
If these two ideas are given effect to, you accomplish two 
things. You give the so much desiderated practical foundation 
for subsequent technical and commercial instruction, while at 
the same time you prepare the ground for the culture of life, 
which must, if it exist at all, be for the great mass of those who 
are likely to seek it — literary, historical, aesthetic, ethical ; 
rarely scientific, and then only in a very popular sense. 

The conclusion to which I point in the politics of education 
is, that, in the Technical Schools Bill, powers should be given 
to introduce commercial subjects into the technical school, 



IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 53 

and, generally, to continue the subjects now taught in primary 
schools. If this be done, the Act will become the charter of 
the secondary schools of the people, and furnish an important 
and much-needed addition to our educational machinery. 
Whatever we do, let us always put the man before the work- 
man, and we shall so not only best fulfil our duty to the 
humanity of the people, but also best fit them, each for himself, 
to acquire and apply the speciality by which he gains his living. 

Note. The Technical Schools Acts admit of this (1901). 



154 



VIII. 

ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM OF 
SECONDARY SCHOOLS 1 . 

To the best of our recollection, it was Lord Playfair who first, 
after the Great Exhibition of 185 1—2, proclaimed to the 
British public that they must set about the technical education 
of both masters and workmen in all our great industries. The 
movement which he set agoing has gradually reached large 
dimensions, and we may almost say that little is now wanted 
to establish the technical education of the country on a sound 
and permanent basis, beyond a more thorough organization of 
existing agencies. More recently we have seen conferences in 
London and elsewhere on the allied subject of "commercial" 
education. 

It is not our intention here to take up the question of 
either Technical or Commercial Schools, but rather to point 
out that, with technical schools on one side and commercial 
schools on the other, the old secondary schools are doomed, 
if they do not quickly reconsider their position and adapt 
themselves to the wants of the country. 

Technical schools are for a very special class of the com- 
munity, it is true ; but a very slight modification of their curri- 
culum and organization would convert them into secondary 
schools based on science, as opposed to the existing secondary 

1 Addressed to the Glasgow Branch of the Teachers' Guild. 



THE CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 1 55 

schools, which are based chiefly on language. The same remark 
applies to the projected commercial schools. The question 
thus naturally arises, "Are we prepared to conclude the long- 
standing debate on the Humanistic and Realistic in education 
by capitulating to the latter?" For ourselves, we think that 
such a result would be a national misfortune. At the same 
time, it has to be faced as a probability, and accepted if 
necessary. But is it necessary ? To technical schools as the 
secondary schools of the industrial classes and to Technical 
Colleges we are already committed, and the specific function 
which they discharge justifies their further extension. But it is 
not necessary, in our opinion, further to deplete the Grammar 
and High Schools of Great Britain in the interests of the new 
demand for specific commercial instruction. There is no defect 
which has yet been found in the boy-products of existing 
schools that cannot be traced either to a faulty programme or 
to bad methods of teaching. Take, for example, arithmetic. 
We are told that young clerks know nothing about the 
application of arithmetic to commercial questions, are wholly 
ignorant of foreign currencies, and are incompetent to trans- 
mute one into the other. Now, there is no student of 
educational method who will not say that this is due simply to 
bad teaching, and that the proper training of teachers is the 
true solution of this, and, indeed, of many other, scholastic 
problems. 

Humanism as the basis of education is now threatened on 
all sides, and it is because of this that, on this occasion, I would 
direct your attention anew to the aim and subjects of secondary 
education generally. My object is to advocate such a modi- 
fication of the curriculum of schools as will leave the linguistic 
basis very much where it is in all essential respects, and to 
establish, not on utilitarian, but on purely educational, grounds, 
a working compromise between the humanistic and the realistic 
in the work of every school. The attack on the mediaeval 
curriculum of our secondary schools and universities has been 



156 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

very persistent during the past forty years, and the assailants, 
while compelled to leave Latin and Greek in the possession of 
all the strategic parts of the field, have yet scored not a few 
successes. The technical and commercial school movements 
are only the more visible results of a prolonged campaign 
which has shaken every old fortress to its centre. To save 
themselves from destruction, alien and hostile elements have 
been assigned a place within the older schools, though, it is 
true, a subordinate and humble place : for the recognition of 
science in the secondary schools of Great Britain has not been 
cordial ; along with modern languages, it cannot be said to be 
more than tolerated. 

Notwithstanding the coldness with which the British mind 
receives all theoretical considerations, it must yet surely be 
admitted that, unless we can find some standard by which we 
can test our educational aims, it will be impossible to adjudicate 
justly on the claims of competing subjects for a place among 
educational instruments. That standard can only be the end 
which we propose to ourselves. Given that secondary edu- 
cation terminates when a boy is 18 (and taking the country 
overhead, this is a reasonable assumption), we have to consider 
what we would have him to be, in respect of knowledge, 
faculty and character generally, when he enters on the work of 
life. 

To put before ourselves as our aim the merely technical 
requirements of this or that industry, profession or occu- 
pation has a show of wisdom about it, but is in truth 
unwise, and will be found in its results unprofitable for our 
youth in an educational, and for the nation in a material, sense. 
Since the revival of letters, the idea which the Attic Greeks 
introduced of educating a man not for this or that special 
function, but simply for manhood, has governed the education 
of civilized Europe. There have been many quarrels, which 
still indeed survive, as to the best way of doing this, but among 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS I 57 

the combatants the leading idea has always been unquestioned. 
Whether we ask Plato, Aristotle, Melanchthon, Sturm, Ascham, 
Montaigne, Milton, or Comenius, the answer has been in 
substance the same. And when that answer is properly under- 
stood, it amounts to this, that the aim of all education is 
ethical, that it has in view Wisdom and Virtue ; and that mere 
knowledge, nay, even discipline of mind, are to be regarded as 
taking their true value from their power of contributing to the 
main purpose — the wise and capable conduct of life. What 
are called " practical " considerations, however, are not on this 
account to be left out of sight ; and in a country like our own, 
which can maintain its existence only by a vast system of 
manufacture and commerce, it is absolutely necessary that the 
" practical " should enter into the education, not merely of the 
future manufacturer or merchant, but also into that of the 
future civil and military servant, and still more into that of the 
politician who is to legislate for the whole or to administer 
affairs. 

While recognizing in the fullest sense the necessity for the 
recognition of the " practical " in a national scheme of edu- 
cation, and the need there is, in a reconsideration and 
reorganization of the curriculum of secondary schools, for 
the fuller development of those new lines of activity on which 
they have already entered, we yet must hold that all efforts to 
attain the supreme educational end — capacity, wisdom, and 
virtue — will assuredly fail if we subject our boys to courses of 
instruction which, being " practical " in the narrow utilitarian 
sense, fail to educate in the larger Hellenic sense. Accordingly, 
we maintain that in the primary school and secondary school 
alike, language must still continue to take precedence of all 
other studies. If the educative aim is to be secured, language 
is the chief of all liberal studies. By liberal studies are to be 
understood those which have in view the manhood of the man, 
and not merely his technical equipment for special depart- 
ments of industrial or professional activity. By such liberal 



158 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

studies, even the practical aims of life will, we hold, be best 
secured. 

But by Language we do not mean grammar, though this 
must be its basis, if the teaching is to be sound ; but language 
in its concrete form as the expression of thought on human 
life — in brief, as literature. It has been recently maintained 
that literature is an impossible subject in schools ; but the 
reason why it is always a difficult subject, and often an 
impossible one, is simply this, that the masters of secondary 
schools are not trained to teach, and know little or nothing 
of methods. It would be an easy matter to show that even 
in primary schools 1 language as literature can be taught; but 
my business, here and now, is with secondary schools, which 
profess to carry on the education of boys from their fourteen 
to eighteen years of age. These boys, we must assume, know 
(to begin with) at least as much as the seventh standard boys 
in Board schools. If they do not, there is something seriously 
wrong somewhere. They must be presumed to be able to read 
ordinary English, to write accurately a simple letter, to parse 
ordinary sentences, to give a fair account of the general 
geography of the world, to have some knowledge of history, to 
work sums in all the ordinary rules of arithmetic, to sing from 
notation, and to draw a little from models. So equipped to begin 
with, and being now of an age to engage with advantage in studies 
which demand a certain power of abstraction and reasoning, we 
have to consider what we are to do with them in order to fit them, 
as fairly cultivated and capable men, to enter on the duties of 
citizenship ; and, let me add, on the enjoyment, as well as the 
work, of life. It is not so much the creation of any specific 
power of mind that we have to aim at as the giving to a youth 
command over his own powers generally. This we cannot 
accomplish unless we both feed the mind and discipline the 
mind. For the attainment of these objects, there is no subject 
that can compare for a moment with language ; and whatever 
1 See Lect. VII. "Liberal Education in the Primary School." 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 159 

else we may teach, this is the one governing subject which must 
run through all education from the infant-school to the univer- 
sity. By Language we mean language in the concrete form, 
as literature, with a view to the nutrition of mind, and also in 
its grammatical and historical forms with a view to the discipline 
of mind by abstract exercises ; — briefly, language both as a 
synthetic and as an analytic study. 

Why now should language be raised to this eminence? 
Because it is the sole "universal" in the intellectual education 
of every human being. Occupation with the relations of 
weights and magnitudes and numbers is not to be despised, 
but it cannot by any possibility educate : such studies can 
at best only sharpen faculty ; and that within a narrow and 
closely defined range. If we can imagine a man devoting 
himself to these questions alone during a lifetime, he would 
at 70 be still a boy as regards all the great questions of human 
life and destiny. The precise extent to which the concrete 
physical and natural sciences can be truly educative I shall not, 
on the present occasion, try to determine. Instructive they 
certainly are in the highest degree. But language, as such, 
is, what they can never be, universal in its sweep and in its 
educational efficacy. It embraces the whole of human life 
and penetrates into the remotest of its recesses. The study 
of it gives command of thought in all its ramifications ; it 
clears our apprehension, makes ' easier our daily observations, 
clarifies judgments and reasonings. Above all, it fits us for 
intelligent communion with the great thinkers of our race. 
Language, in truth, is always with us ; in our getting up and our 
lying down: and if we start well-equipped when young, it cannot 
but grow daily in reach and definiteness under the pressure 
of our multifarious relations to men and things. Step by step 
with language grows our life as thinking and active spirits, 
and of this we may be assured, that if language is not growing 
in us, we are intellectually dead. 

But it may be said that in studying science we are studying 



l60 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

language, since all knowledge is necessarily acquired through 
language. The language of specialisms, however, is not the 
language we mean ; except, of course, those specialisms (if we 
may so call them) which have a deep and wide human and 
humane significance, such as philosophy and art. Specialistic 
language adds to our knowledge of a particular department; 
but, simply because there is nothing universal in it, it fails 
to educate our humanity. Perhaps an illustration will best 
convey what I mean. If any man of general cultivation were 
to open a book on embryology, he might read a whole page 
without understanding a single word, except the more ordinary 
verbs and particles necessary to the construction of all sen- 
tences. But, as a man, he is none the worse because he does 
not understand it ; and if he had been able to understand it, 
he would, as a man, have been none the better. Now let him 
take up a volume of poems and read a piece by, say, George 
Herbert. If he does not understand that, then, as a man, 
he is so much the worse ; but understanding it, he is, as a 
man, so much the better. It is this universality of language 
as such, causing it to touch every human interest, every moral 
and spiritual aspect of life, and every spring of human activity, 
that gives it its claim, even if there were no other, to a 
governing place in all education up to the time at which a 
young man must specialize. Other subjects may give an edge 
to faculty. Language at once feeds the soul and enlarges faculty. 
Important, too, is the consideration that the study of 
language is a historical study. And this in a far other and 
deeper sense than the analysis and origin of word-forms. It 
is historical because it is itself the reflection of the thought 
and the whole active being of man through all time. It is 
the accumulated and complete resultant of all history. In 
studying language as it ought to be studied, we are re-thinking, 
each for himself, the thought of past ages, and it is in this 
sense, chiefly, that language is, in truth, history. Just as it is 
community of language which more than anything else makes 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS l6l 

of a crowd of men a nation, so it is language, simply as such, 
which binds together the remotest past of man with the 
present. Each new form of speech, as it attains maturity, 
tries to make the riches of preceding allied forms its own, 
thereby to find a fitting vehicle for ever subtler and more 
adequate expression. The very sentence which I now write 
may be said to be influenced by all the words which have 
preceded it in time and which have made us moderns possible. 
It is to this their lordly heritage — this embalmed history of the 
human soul, that we desire to introduce boys when we teach 
them language. 

Again, the study of language is the unobtrusive and indirect 
study of morality and religion. It is the indirectness of the moral 
and religious sentiment, that constitutes the substance of litera- 
ture, which enables us to influence the young through works of 
genius. Boys resent direct moral and religious teaching in the 
very years in which they most need it, if it be too obvious. It 
is only by means of literature, including historical literature, 
that we can lead them insensibly to make acquaintance with 
moral and spiritual ideals. In our great writers we find 
recorded the experience of the past on the deepest human 
relations ; and in a single sentence we may find more of the 
real, more of the true substance of things than in a complete 
enumeration of the facts of mere sense in ordered file of cause 
and effect. The things that constitute the substance of human 
life, not physical facts and relations, are specially the things 
which touch the inmost soul of even the naturally callous. 
"Train and perfect the gift of speech," says Prof. Seeley 1 , 
"unfold all that is in it, and you train at the same time 
the power of thought and the power of intellectual sympathy." 
"Literature," says Mark Pattison, "is the moral contem- 
plation of the universe" — the "criticism of life." Without 
further argument, then, we may conclude that the study of 
language, thus humanely and largely conceived, expands the 
1 p. 222 of Lectures and Essays. 
L. L. II 



l62 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

sympathies and feeds the, soul of man as no other subject 
can possibly do. 

But language can further lay claim to a unique power 
of sharpening and disciplining faculty. For, as a gram- 
matical or logical study, and as an inquiry into the growth 
of historical . forms, it exercises the intelligence in the 
making of distinctions, it makes words bear their true 
meaning, it dissipates 'fallacies of matter,' it puts us 
perpetually through life on our guard against sophisms. By 
training to exactness and precision of speech it trains to 
exactness and precision of thought. It is the best ally of 
the seeker after truth, even in the domain of natural science. 
This exactness is an inevitable effect of the formal study of 
language, for, properly conducted, the analytic study of speech 
is the study of the machinery of thought itself. If the study 
of language does not accomplish all I have claimed for it, it is 
the fault of defective aims and methods. It is true that there 
is a certain discipline in all purposed activity, even writing 
and carpentering ; but the discipline is not equally good in all. 
In these manual occupations, the successive efforts are. a 
repetition of acts loosely connected, calling into activity a 
minimum of mental effort and only a very restricted range 
of intelligence ; but in the thorough understanding of language 
there is a purposed act of reason, which, in its series of efforts, 
is an organic process and demands a sustained continuity of 
mind. In translating and retranslating from a foreign tongue, 
for example, the difficulties are not to be overcome unless 
perception, discrimination, judgment, association, imagination, 
reasoning (inductive and deductive), are all brought into 
conscious (if not self-conscious) activity; all these, through 
their organic connexion, creating a synthetic result, viz. the 
translation we are given to do. It will be said that, on similar 
psychological grounds, mathematics is a most effective mental 
discipline. This is true so far ; and because it is true so far, 
mathematics (within certain limits, at least) must always be 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 163 

assured a place in our curriculum only second to the leading 
subject of all. I say second, because the mental operation in- 
volved in understanding the proof of a theorem, or in working 
a rider, is confined within narrow grooves, and is concerned 
with necessary matter. The imagination which enters into the 
solution of a geometrical problem is confined within strict limits. 
Its wings are clipped. In language, on the contrary, we have 
to deal with the subtle, variable, and uncertain relations that 
exist among words and between words and thoughts. The 
shades of feeling which enter into our thoughts can never be 
exhausted, and are constantly demanding more apt expression. 
In advocating language in its real and formal aspects as 
the central subject of secondary instruction, up to the age of 
eighteen, we advocate nothing new. The Athenians and the 
Romans trained their young men by means of language ; the 
education of the middle ages had language, and, indeed, solely 
Latin, as its instrument of education; and even at the mediaeval 
universities, the extension of language-teaching into Rhetoric 
and Logic was but a natural development on linguistic lines ; 
for the study of Logic and Rhetoric is merely the study in an 
abstract and formal way of what is already familiar to the 
student in the concrete form of language. The revival of 
letters did not dethrone language, but merely added the study 
of the substance of language — that is to say, literature, to that 
of dry, tedious, and badly formulated grammatical rules, thus 
restoring the Hellenic idea. Since the Reformation, the Latin 
language, thus more or less modified by the influence of the 
Renaissance, and with the addition of Greek, has formed the 
chief matter of school discipline throughout Europe. Of course 
it may be said by some, that the more old-world the doctrine 
the more is it to be repudiated by the enlightened modern ; but 
we would ask the modern realist to pause and consider what 
the past, trained on the lines we have indicated, has done for 
humanity and for us. There must be not a little to be said for 
studies which fed the genius of Greece, which gave substance 



164 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

to the virile mind of Rome, and which have yielded to 
modern Europe the rich literature of the past 450 years. If 
we are reminded, by way of objection, of the barren outcome 
of the 950 years that elapsed after Constantine, the answer is 
ready ; for this was due partly to historical conditions, and 
partly to the ignoring of language as a concrete subject. It 
was only analytically and with a view to immediate use as an 
organ of communication that language was taught (save in a 
few places) in the Episcopal and Monastery schools. Down 
to the 13 th century the mediaeval studies were thus not only 
abstract and grammatical, but they were also, in truth, utili- 
tarian. It was this utilitarianism, the subservience of language 
to merely ecclesiastical and other necessary uses that emptied 
it of all genuine liberalizing influence. 

In settling what and how much of language, concrete and 
analytic, we are to teach, it is to us almost self-evident that the 
mother-tongue ought, to be the beginning, middle, and end 
of all linguistic instruction. Here we part company with the 
classical Humanists. All other languages should, so to speak, 
play up to the vernacular. It requires no argument, however, 
to shew that no man (we, of course, except men of marked 
genius) can know his own tongue, unless he knows at least one 
other well. This has been often said. Among the alien 
languages at his command for school use, the teacher must, 
accordingly, select that one which will most surely attain the 
ends of all linguistic teaching — that which will most effectually 
give command of the mother-tongue, both in its words and 
forms, that which will historically best connect him with past 
thought, that which will be most moral and aesthetic in its 
influences, that which will most surely contribute to discipline 
in thinking and in exactness of expression. There can be no 
doubt that it is in Latin that we English find these conditions 
alone in union, and that Latin, accordingly, above all other 
tongues, ought to be the basis, along with English, of all 
linguistic training. So true is this that it seems to us that (to 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 165 

apply an old witticism in a new connexion) if we had not Latin, 
it would be necessary to invent it. 

With English and Latin — presuming that Latin is taught 
(which it rarely is) in the broad realistic way, broad both 
philologically, historically, and aesthetically, in which it will be 
taught when our secondary schoolmasters are trained in edu- 
cational methods and aims, and that the English of the school 
includes extensive reading in the literature of our national 
history — the school-day would be well occupied to the extent 
of fully one-half, and the remaining portion (about three hours 
a day), is all that would be available for other subjects. 

We may seem as yet to have said very little that can afford 
guidance in constructing a secondary curriculum out of the 
present confusion ; but what we have said implies a good deal. 
For if we grant that the end to be constantly kept in view in 
all secondary education, as in all primary, is an ethical one — 
capacity for the personal conduct and social duties of life ; 
and if, further, we have fixed the leading instrument in that 
education, it is not so difficult, as it at first may seem, to 
determine the rest of the curriculum, especially if we now bring 
within our consideration the directly practical uses of life, — 
the fitting of boys for their specific functions as citizens. For 
having once secured those instruments by which the young can 
best be truly educated, namely, English (including History), 
and Latin, we are now at liberty to look, with an impartial mind, 
at all the other subjects pressing for recognition in subjection to 
the second, but always subordinate, guiding principle — the pre- 
paration of boys for the various specific duties they may have 
to discharge as citizens. Here, we would place first in order 
that subject which might, did space permit, be shewn to be 
the most cultivating generally, as well as to be most directly 
related to the various occupations of citizens in a country such 
as ours — we mean Geography. Geography does not mean the 
miserable scraps of the modern school. We use the word in 
the sense in which it is taken in the recent work by Sir 



l66 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

Archibald Geikie, Director of the Geological Survey, and by 
leading authors on Method 1 . So taught, it embraces all that 
is essential for a cultivated man to know of the world of nature, 
it gives life to history and lays the sure foundation of com- 
mercial, industrial, and political knowledge. It is thus both a 
general and also a specific and useful study — at once liberal 
and utilitarian. 

Next to Geography, in the large sense in which I have 
defined it, come Arithmetic and Mathematics, both because 
they are disciplinary, and because, as instruments in the work 
of the world, they stand in manifold relations to practical life. 
But neither on utilitarian nor disciplinary grounds is it necessary 
to go far in Mathematics. A boy leaving a secondary school 
at the age of 18, who has an exact knowledge of four books of 
Euclid with their practical applications, and of Algebra to 
Quadratics, has nearly as much as the majority of men had 
who graduated at our universities a few years ago. I say exact 
knowledge ; for a single step in such subjects which is not 
exact is intellectually hurtful. Where there are proper methods 
of teaching, this department should not occupy boys above 14 
(already by that time familiar with ordinary arithmetical 
operations) more than five hours a week. By proper methods 
we mean practical methods— the turning to use of everything 
that is taught. I am well aware that mathematical specialists 
will demand three times five hours weekly, but they must not 
be allowed to ride their hobby to the detriment of national 
education. Enough is conceded to them, if the instruction-plan 
of the school admits of those boys who have a marked mathe- 
matical aptitude specializing in the last year of secondary 
school study 2 . 

1 See subsequent lecture on Geography. 

2 In these days, when all professions, and many occupations, are 
hedged round by examinations, the last year of every boy's secondary 
course should be largely a specialised one, having directly in view the 
examination he has to pass. A boy may quite well be coached at school 
without being crammed. 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 167 

We consider that we have now laid down all that is 
tiecessary for the thorough education of a mind. The analytic 
powers have been exercised in Language, the inductive in the 
acquisition of nature-knowledge and Geography, the deductive 
in mathematics and in the application of the principles of 
language to translation and composition ; the imagination and 
the emotions have received their proper nutriment in literature 
and the study of nature, and the national spirit has been 
fostered by broad and various historical reading. So far as 
mere education is concerned nothing more is wanted, always 
presuming that these subjects are so organized, and so spread 
over the school-period, as to leave a fair amount of leisure to 
boys, not only for play but for the growth of native aptitudes, 
such as handwork, music, &c. 

But no scheme of instruction, however well devised, will 
succeed, except with the few ardent boys, if the minds of the 
masters are not richly endowed, and if the principles and 
methods of education are not studied and applied. Secondary 
schoolmasters often sit down contented with results which would 
insure the prompt dismissal of a primary schoolmaster in our 
remotest glens. They assume that nothing more can be made 
of boys than they make. They are utterly wrong. We recently 
saw a report by a distinguished headmaster of an English 
public school in which he spoke of the attainments of all boys, 
outside three or four racehorses who had specialised with a 
view to Oxford and Cambridge scholarship competitions, as 
"graded ignorance." Very honest this; but very lamentable. 
And this headmaster was one of those who publicly and 
deliberately gave it as his opinion that young Oxford and 
Cambridge graduates, who took up the work of education, had 
no need to study their life-work in its principles, history, and 
methods, because they had already had perfect models in their 
own teachers, and would likewise have them in the headmasters 
under whom they might take service ! Our conviction is that 



168 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

an examination of English secondary schools, in which the 
results were honestly put before the public, would explode our 
present system. 

The restricted curriculum which we have briefly sketched 
is, we repeat, adequate, and should be universal. It is also 
practical and fits for life, " commercial " and other. There is 
no " modern " side in education. Education rests on principles. 
What is good for the future cleric is good for the future 
physician, schoolmaster, lawyer, merchant, publicist, and civil 
servant ; and it is these guides, governors, and instructors of 
the nation that we have alone to consider in our secondary 
schools. Education is no respecter of persons or occupations. 

But the above course of instruction, while sufficient for all 
educative purposes, still leaves a large portion of the school 
time-table a blank. There is room for more. In seeking 
about for other subjects, we may now allow ourselves to be 
wholly guided by practical considerations. And whether the 
boy is to be a cleric, a physician, a lawyer, a scientific expert, 
or a merchant, French and German urge their claims with 
irresistible force. In the first year of these languages not less 
than five hours a week, exclusive of preparation, should be set 
apart for each, and three hours in future years. French should 
be begun one year, and German the following. 

A recent writer who is also a high official in the Education 
Office contrasts the Latin and Greek of our highest public 
schools with what he calls "slipshod French and inaccurate 
German." It may be that that gentleman found his own 
French and German when he left school slipshod and inac- 
curate ; but, not to waste time in speaking of German, there 
is in French a training to accuracy and exactness and linguistic 
form of the most admirable kind, — in my opinion not excelled 
even by Greek. If it is not so well taught in our schools as 
Greek and Latin, this is a defect which can be remedied, and 
our duty is to remedy it. Is there no such thing as slipshod 
Greek ? Ask the examiners for the " Little-go " at Cambridge. 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 169 

Again, how long shall we continue to ignore the fact that the 
masters of literature, philosophy, art, and science in Great 
Britain knew little Greek ? Because the early stages of French 
are comparatively easy, the French language as a discipline 
and culture is depreciated. 

The Time-table is now full. With Greek we certainly part 
most reluctantly ; but the claims of French and German are in 
these days such that Greek can find (I say it with regret) no 
place in the enforced curriculum of secondary schools. As a 
specific subject for the few who mean to be clergymen, philo- 
logers, or classical schoolmasters, it ought to be provided ; but 
not demanded of all. 

Art, however, need not be neglected : the adornment of 
the schoolrooms with good casts and facsimile photographs 
will engage the interest of every good teacher. Singing from 
notation will be taught twice a week, and drawing will have 
three hours weekly assigned to it. This would extend the 
school-day to seven hours, but these subjects do not add to 
the weight of the curriculum, but rather lighten it. Workshops 
also ought, like covered gymnasiums, to form a part of the 
equipment of every school, especially in a climate like ours. 
Manual work has a certain intellectual as well as moral 
significance in education, and it is especially valuable for that 
class of society which does not live by manual labour. 

Now the clamorous school of educationalists outside will 
begin each to push his own peculiar hobby. We shall be 
asked, " If this be all, where is instruction in the laws of 
health ? where instruction in our civil constitution, and the 
duties of citizenship? where are physics and chemistry?" 
The answer is that the first two questions are put by those 
pedants in education who imagine that to teach a subject one 
must give it a place in a time-table, and prescribe a text-book. 
The laws of health ought certainly to be taught to every boy, 
but a few diagrams and simple experiments, and eight or nine 



170 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

familiar lessons in the last year of school attendance will give 
all that is necessary for hygienic purposes. As to citizenship 
and the constitution, this kind of knowledge is, as a matter 
of course, conveyed in connexion with the historical reading 
by every master who is really competent to teach history, and 
is familiar with the demands of method. Science again is 
sufficiently represented in the nature-knowledge included 
under the head of Geography largely interpreted. The theory 
of Chemistry and the abstractions of Physics are not more 
educative than the learning of a Greek verb; because they 
are, and can only be, received by a boy as facts, not as the 
outcome of his own investigation and inductive reasoning. 
He gets them by heart, which means by rote, and is conse- 
quently wasting his time, and merely learning to hate science 1 . 
The properties of matter and the mechanical powers, we 
willingly grant, when well-taught are educative, because they 
are capable of visible and palpable illustration ; and we further 
admit that such elementary notions of Chemistry as bear 
directly on the constitution of matter can be taught experi- 
mentally with great advantage. So also can Botany, if it means 
the dissection of a plant by the boy himself under supervision. 
But if education in other and more important subjects is to be 
thorough, these subjects (which are the object-lessons of the 
secondary school), while they must be kept in view, must be 
treated not as serious studies demanding the application of a 
boy's full powers, but merely as parerga designed to interest 
and stimulate the intelligence. They will be more effective for 
this purpose if not formally prescribed. There is too much 
formal and magisterial lesson-giving in schools. These subjects 
should involve no lesson-learning. They should be handled 
conversationally, and a really good teacher of these might quite 

1 Concetitration on these subjects if taught as laboratory subjects after 
1 6 years of age is educative, but in that case language must yield its place 
to them. Is this desirable except in technical schools or departments of 
schools? 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 171 

safely, with excellent results, make his conversational prelections 
optional so far as the boys were concerned ; for if he were a 
good teacher every boy would come. 

Our main object in this consideration of secondary instruc- 
tion is to bring into prominence the necessity of organizing the 
instruction, not in a fragmentary way, not by the arbitrary 
setting up of different lines of study, not by external con- 
siderations, not in obedience to the clamour of the hour, but 
on broad and sound educational principles. What is good for 
one boy is good for another ; and what is good for a boy is, so 
far as general education goes, good for a girl up to the age of 
17 or 18 if she has time to spare from art studies. If there is 
anything in educational principles at all, there must be a unity 
in educational ends and methods and a unity in the educational 
curriculum. All outside what is best for the true education of 
a boy is of the nature of study undertaken for a specific, 
external, bread-earning purpose ; for this I have provided the 
necessary time as far as modern languages are concerned, while 
indicating that the last year of attendance might be devoted to 
specialized work adapted to the future destination of the boy. 
If a boy is either too idle or too stupid to benefit by the general 
education offered to him, he can be kept in the same class 
until his father, disgusted, removes him, as much to the boy's 
own advantage as to that of the school, and puts him to some 
private classes or to a trade. The education of the country is 
not to be sacrificed to a few stupid or idle boys. 

Remember that the quantity of knowledge to be acquired 
is not much — ought not to be much. No man who has had 
any experience of the work done in schools cares much for an 
extension of the quantity professed. It is the quality which 
has to be looked to. Exact and thorough knowledge of 
elements in languages and mathematics, if possessed by a boy 
of 17, will enable him after that age to advance with giant 



172 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

strides in these departments, if he chooses. Every student, 
who has given himself to serious, independent work after 
reaching the university stage, knows this. 

Our conviction is that the re-organization of the instruction 
of our secondary schools is an urgent one. The Latin and 
Greek curriculum which now prevails, accompanied by a merely 
ostensible teaching of other subjects, will soon attract only 
those boys who are going to be clergymen, for already the 
other professions dispense with Greek and take a minimum of 
Latin. More Latin, along with French and English, might be 
then demanded. What we should aim at is to preserve the idea 
of the old system in so far as it can be shewn to be educationally 
sound, and yet, at the same time, to meet the modern wants of 
all sections of the middle class. And the idea of the old 
system was that by language boys can best be fitted to be 
men as well as to be practical workers. We cling to this idea. 
It is thus that we are truly Greek, not by studying Greek. 
We hold the Hellenic conception to be fundamentally sound 
even in these latter days. But in adapting this idea to modern 
conditions, we have interpreted language to mean, first of all 
our own tongue, and then Latin and other tongues as merely 
subsidiary to it. By Latin, however, let us say, we mean more 
Latin and better Latin than is at present taught. Surely it is 
a public scandal that not more than 10 or 15 per cent, of boys 
below the 6th form (which form is constituted by a kind of 
natural selection), get any real benefit from Latin as at present 
taught. To the teacher we say : Study methods, fix aims ; 
apply your methods and you will attain your aims. Above 
all, teach language not only as an analytic exercise, but as 
concrete, as literature. It is quite possible to do this. Make 
the whole study living, and save humanism from being over- 
whelmed by the advancing wave of scientific realism. With 
humanism will go, remember, moral ideals, spiritual life, art 






OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 1 73 

and poetry. What a bleak and barren prospect ! Is it to be 
supposed that the character of the nation will not be affected 
by the educational revolution ? 

We can imagine now, the purely classical humanist who 
still lives in the atmosphere of the 16th century, asking, 'If 
Greek is to go and so much time is to be given to English, 
Latin, history, realistic subjects, modern languages, drawing 
and singing, what is to become of culture ? ' If culture means 
Greek, then we say that there will be as much of it in the future 
as now. The schoolboys at our secondary schools and univer- 
sities who are fighting a losing game with Greek syntax and 
prosody may surely disappear from the scene, to the great joy 
of themselves and their masters, without lowering the standard 
of Greek scholarship. What a sham the whole business is — 
this of the culture of the young bowler and batter by means 
of Greek! How can classical masters look parents and the 
public in the face with the dire secrets of the examination 
room in their pockets ? Talk of augurs not being able to pass 
each other without a smile ! If giving up culture means 
giving up the ability to write Latin and Greek prose at which 
Cicero and Plato would shake their heads, and verse at which 
Horace and Euripides would laugh, it had better go. Culture 
is not possible on these terms, never was possible except for 
2 or 3 per cent, of the boys who frequent our secondary 
schools. Is the education of the country to be sacrificed to 
the small percentage of such successes ? While allowing for 
the continued production of these linguistic experts, a public 
system ought to succeed in giving the full benefits of its 
organized curriculum to at least 70 per cent, of those whom 
it professes to prepare for life. 

And, after all, what is culture? We readily grant that a 
man who can turn out neat verses in Latin and Greek is a 
man of culture, not because of the verses he produces (that 
would be absurd), but because the skill he displays is evidence 



174 ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM 

that he has gone through a long course of linguistic and 
humanistic training, which effloresces in this particular way. 
But such special accomplishments are, as a matter of fact, 
very seldom found in conjunction with culture in its truer and 
larger sense. If I find a man with a command of his own 
powers, with an open intelligence, with interests outside his 
own personality and his own particular department, with a 
feeling for the historical past, with a love for art-forms, and 
with high aims in life, I recognize in such a man the humanistic 
and human habit of mind in its broadest sense; and him I 
would call a man of culture. Many learned men are stupid, 
many scholarly men are oddities, many scientific experts are 
boors. It is the ethical outcome which Pericles and Plato, I 
imagine, would have called culture. And such culture is not 
the exclusive possession of academic aristocrats who can turn 
verses or fight over emendations. It is in order to promote 
that larger culture, which alone is Hellenic culture, that our 
schools, primary, secondary, and university have their existence 
as parts of the national polity ; and (leaving out, meanwhile, 
all consideration of universities) we believe that such culture 
can be best promoted in schools by the curriculum which we 
have sketched, if masters understand their business. 

But here lies the difficulty — with the masters, not with the 
boys. To turn over the teaching of English to men who have 
no love of literature and no understanding of the methods 
whereby it may be made to stimulate the minds of the young, 
or to ask a master to teach geography who is not himself an 
expert in geography, with a fair knowledge of geology and 
physics, as well as a student of economics, is to ensure failure. 
Such a mode of procedure would introduce into even the 
richest and most fruitful of subjects the barrenness and aridity 
of the old gerund-grinding. And fulness of knowledge alone 
will not suffice for the master: the study of the principles and 
methods of education is essential. But what hope have we of 



OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS 175 

this when we find headmasters of great public schools openly 
telling us that they have nothing to learn, and that they, and 
those who have the privilege of working under them, have 
already reached " perfection's sacred height " ? There are not 
a few certainly who are born teachers — men with a singular 
capacity for guiding youthful minds ; but the great majority 
must always be dependent on the study of the history, 
principles and methods of their craft for the due discharge 
of their educative function. "Even the youngest" fellow of 
a college may have something to learn from Plato, Quintilian, 
Ascham, Comenius, and Locke. 

Note. The subject of the training of secondary schoolmasters 
has made considerable progress since the above was written. 



176 



IX. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; AND 
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 1 . 

Notwithstanding the difficulties that surround the question 
of the rise and early constitution of Universities, the leading 
historical outlines have for some time been clear enough, it 
seems to me ; sufficiently so, at least, to enable us to under- 
stand the purpose of the higher institutions of learning and to 
forecast their function in the future. 

But if we are to do this and to convey to the reader 
anything but a mass of uninterpreted facts, we must find a 
point of view which will also be a point of departure. We 
must go back to the pre-Christian world, and find there the 
beginnings of our modern academic life. The reader must 
not be impatient of apparently remote events if he desires to 
understand the universities of the present day, still less if he 
would form an intelligent conception of the aims of the 
"university of the future." 

We may say, generally, that the chief purpose of the higher 
academic institutions was always knowledge. This know- 
ledge, however, had always for its aim a practical purpose — the 
explanation of man's life and destiny and the settlement of 

1 Written by request for the Annual Blue Book of the Trade Unions, 
1893. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE \yj 

questions which bore on the personal conduct of life and 
practical organizations. 

Three nations have moulded the life of modern Europe — 
Palestine, Greece, and Rome. As soon as these nations had 
settled down to civilized life and had leisure to "look before 
and after," there gradually grew up among them groups of men 
who devoted themselves to investigation and thought. In 
every political organization, the mass of men are too deeply 
engrossed in industrial work or in the duties of government 
and war, to find time to do more than acquiesce in the theory 
of life which they have inherited from their ancestors, and 
which is embodied in their customs, religion, and laws. 
Only a few can give themselves to thought with a view to 
knowledge and the criticism of custom. So it is now, and so 
it will ever be. And if we are to continue to advance in 
knowledge of nature and man, and in a true comprehension 
of the significance of human life, the growing pressure of 
industrial competition and the clamant demands of each 
exacting day make it more than ever necessary that institu- 
tions should exist in which a few men may be set apart to 
maintain the connection of the present with the past, and to 
advance the knowledge of mankind for the benefit of their 
fellow-men. It is true that men, so set apart, often forget 
mankind in their devotion to their subjects, and prosecute 
their studies with little thought of their practical bearing ; but 
none the less, perhaps all the more, are they the leaders of 
thought and the benefactors of their race. The printing-press 
disseminates their results, and all can now share in the fruits of 
their labour. The love of knowledge is in man inextinguish- 
able, and the attainments of one generation are but the starting- 
point for new enterprises of discovery. 

Accordingly, were it the fact that "knowledge for the sake 
of knowledge " exclusively engaged the universities of Europe 
and America, it would still be necessary to maintain them in 
the interests of humanity at large and the ideal realities that 

L. L. 12 



178 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

give a meaning to the life of man. But they do not exist for 
this purpose alone, but for teaching what is known to all who 
frequent their halls, for preparing the next generation of in- 
vestigators, and for training to the various professions that 
minister to our daily wants. These professions rest on know- 
ledge, and universities give it. The clergyman, the physician, 
the lawyer, the teacher, can (speaking generally) find in uni- 
versities alone the knowledge bearing on their respective fields 
of social activity, ready organized and fashioned for their use ; 
and so with the engineer and the agriculturist, in so far as the 
principles that guide practice are concerned. Accordingly, 
every man, however humble, who benefits by the laws of his 
country, whose diseases are diagnosed and alleviated, whose 
children are instructed, and to whom the teachings and 
consolations of religion are offered, is a debtor to universities. 
And it is scarcely necessary to point to the close connection 
of the higher mathematics and physics with engineering, 
railways, telegraphy, steamships, etc., etc., and of chemistry 
with innumerable industrial arts, to satisfy even the most 
exacting that to universities are largely due not only the 
thought that elevates the mind of man and lifts him to a 
higher plane of existence, but also that exact knowledge which 
makes his life more tolerable while it lasts, and promotes 
further advances in the conquest of nature and in the equitable 
adjustment of social relations. It is true that, in modern 
times, much of the function of universities is discharged with 
surpassing ability through the agency of those living outside 
them, by means of the printing-press ; but the majority, if not 
indeed all, these active agents in civilization ultimately owe 
their knowledge and inspiration to the work of men who live 
alone for abstract knowledge, and who are chiefly to be found 
now, as in the past, within academic walls working in accord- 
ance with academic methods. It will be apparent, then, that 
universities, which at first sight seem remote from the life of the 
ordinary citizen, are in truth closely connected with that life, 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 179 

existing, as they do, not merely for knowledge but for the dis- 
semination of knowledge, which is thus made the possession 
of all. No institution, accordingly, is so essentially demo- 
cratic in its aims, for none is so universal in the benefits it 
confers, irrespectively of race, religion, or social position. I 
think it of the utmost importance that those to whom this 
paper is addressed — the trade-organizations of Great Britain — 
should realize these facts. The universities are the true friends 
of the people. 

It will be apparent that I am using the word "university" 
to include all schools of higher learning set apart for young 
men and women above eighteen years of age, the aim of which 
is at once scientific and practical — that is to say, which exist to 
prosecute departments of human inquiry and to teach what 
is known to others. By these tests we may always safely try 
the higher university schools of the past and the present. If 
they fail to identify themselves with the advancement of learning, 
but confine themselves to the teaching and training of the 
youth of the country with a view to the professions, they 
discharge only partially the function of universities. If, again, 
they aim at knowledge for its own sake alone, they become 
semi-monastic institutions, and are divorced from the life of 
the nation : if, further, they take up only one part of the 
encyclopaedia, they become departmental colleges and forfeit 
the name of University. 

These remarks are not unnaturally suggested by our reference 
to the sources of our modern academic life — Palestine, Greece, 
and Rome. In Palestine we find the higher intellectual life of 
the Hebrews in the "schools of the prophets 1 ," out of whom 
came the men who formed the religious and moral con- 
ceptions of the Jewish race. These men of genius gave us 

1 I use this expression, though well aware of the want of exact 
knowledge as to the organization of the "schools," if they might be 
strictly called by this name. 

12 — 2 



l8o THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE 






the Old Testament, in so far as it is a book for the whole 
world and not merely for a Semitic tribe. They desired to 
know, but the supreme object of their knowledge was God 
and the relation of men to Him. Consequently they were 
great spiritual teachers, not only to the Jews, but to all 
mankind. 

Among the Greeks, we find that the thought of that wonder- 
ful race (represented chiefly at Athens) did not restrict itself 
to the idea of God (for which indeed they may be said to have 
substituted the Beautiful and Art), but sought knowledge in 
every direction, impartially and with an open eye, giving to 
Europe great philosophies and the elements of the sciences, as 
well as a pure and noble literature which, in the interests of the 
humblest modern citizen, must ever be conserved and studied 
anew. 

In Rome, again, we find a practical spirit. The Romans 
took up Greek thought and speculation, and tried to correlate 
it with the practical life of man. In so far as they speculated 
at all, they followed the Greeks ; in so far as they were original, 
their higher schools gave prominence to law and oratory — the 
one to regulate social life and the administration of the State, 
the other to influence opinion and direct current politics and 
public policy. 

If, now, we leap forward over a space of about 2000 years to 
the present day, we find that a fully-equipped university com- 
prehends these three great human aims — knowledge of God and 
His relations to man and the world ; knowledge pursued in 
the Hellenic spirit, wide and impartial, including philosophy, 
literature, science ; and jurisprudence and politics pursued 
after the Roman manner. To these has been added, in 
the course of the centuries, and as necessary outcome of the 
primary ideas, the scientific study of medicine, of history, 
philology, engineering, agriculture, and education, some of 
these more obtrusively " practical " in the ordinary sense of 
that word than the others, but all claiming a place in our 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE l8l 

higher institutions of learning, in so far as they rest on abstract 
knowledge and can be handled scie?itifically. To constitute a 
modern ideal university accordingly, which is at the same time 
to be the university of the future, we have to take all that was 
valuable in the higher teaching of antiquity, and to extend our 
investigations on every side in accordance with the spirit and 
needs of the time we live in. The ancient nations, it is true, 
had no higher schools with the designation of " universities," 
nor any institution with an encyclopaedic aim, but they had the 
reality without the name, each in its own special line of national 
genius. To the Greeks, for example, we owe scientific medicine 
and our medical faculties ; but, except at Alexandria, medicine 
was not included in the philosophical and rhetorical schools, 
which were the true universities of Greece, and subsequently of 
Rome. And yet, by a succession of distinguished men, Medi- 
cine, closely bound up with the study of nature, was taught 
to willing disciples ; and when, after a lapse of time, modern 
Europe began to rise out of the ruins of the Roman Empire, 
Medicine at once took its place as a leading academic subject. 

About 2000 years ago there occurred a great breach in 
the intellectual continuity of the race. With the exception 
of Palestine, the religious faiths of the ancient world were 
going to pieces when Christ appeared, and the higher schools 
of thought were themselves fast degenerating into arenas for 
speculative disputations or into rhetorical forcing-houses. They 
had worn themselves out. The earnest pursuit of truth for 
truth's sake was represented only by a man of genius here 
and there. The more earnest minds, having thrown off the 
superstitions by which their ancestors had lived, were clinging 
to some scheme of philosophy which seemed to offer them 
the only solution of man's life and duty in this transitory 
existence. The teaching of Christ now intervened, with its 
direct bearing on human life in all its relations. The divine 
enthusiasm, which it inspired in its converts, began to remould 



1 82 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

the civilized world, and, even before the recognition of Chris- 
tianity by the Emperor Constantine towards the end of the 
fourth century, its doctrines had engaged the attention of 
almost all the ablest minds. It is, however, an error to 
suppose that the new religion undermined the university 
schools of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome. These were 
already tottering to their fall, when the new spiritual move- 
ment made them in the fifth century an anachronism. Had 
Christianity, indeed, assumed a purely negative attitude to 
the Romano-Hellenic life and culture, and done no more, it 
would have to be classed among the destructive powers of 
barbarism. But it had its positive side ; it had in it a power 
to build up as well as to throw down. It introduced more 
than one new idea into the life of our race. It broadened and 
deepened the sentiment of the common brotherhood of man, 
which the Stoics had preached, by giving to sympathy and 
love a divine sanction. It gave spiritual solidarity to the 
human race. Most important of all, it fortified the growing 
sense of personality. The individual was now not only a free, 
thinking spirit which bad its personal life and personal rights, 
but this self-conscious spirit, the true person of each individual, 
was now seen to be rooted in God — to be of infinite import- 
ance even in His eyes. Thus, by one stroke, as it were, the 
personality of each man was deepened, nay, consecrated, while 
at the same time his bond of sympathy with all other human 
beings, as children of the same Father, was strengthened. 
Two opposite results were thus attained; and these two were 
conciliated. For the deepening of man's spiritual, personal 
life meant in truth the life with God, and it was in and through 
this life that his personality became a matter of infinite worth. 
This rooting of the finite subject in the eternal and universal 
Being, while giving infinite worth to the soul of each man, at 
the same time made impossible that insolence of individualism 
and self-assertion which had characterized the sophistical move- 
ment among the Greeks. Man became as a personality much 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 183 

greater than the most exalted Stoic could have conceived ; but 
by the very same movement he was taught humility, depend- 
ence, toleration, humanity, love. Education had now to be 
reconstructed from this foundation. 

As may be easily understood, that part of the new doctrine 
which taught that man lived for a hereafter, and that this life 
was a preparation for that hereafter, first told on the educational 
efforts of the time. The leaders of the new Evangel directed 
themselves chiefly to catechising and instructing with a view 
to a city not of this world ; and they did so in expectation 
of the early dissolution of all things. They also began to 
prepare ministers of Christian doctrine ; for the people had 
to be instructed in the new philosophy of life, and temple 
services had to be conducted. There was great moral activity 
and a wide comprehensiveness in the new " sect " ; and so far 
as education was concerned, it might fairly be said that every 
Christian assemblage where the Gospels were read, prayers 
offered, and hymns sung, was a people's school. To discharge 
this religious duty and to train its ministers was as much as 
the infant community could be expected to do. This it did 
in the catechetical and, afterwards, in the episcopal schools 1 ; 
and thus a fresh beginning was made for the education of the 
human race. 

The rise of Christianity and Christian education, and the 
irruption of the Teutonic races into the fruitful fields of 
Southern Europe, finally dissolved ancient society, and swept 
away the very memory of Hellenic genius. Even in the East, 
where nations were held together by Byzantine dynasties 
governing from Constantinople, it was the settlement of 
Christian doctrine that now exclusively engaged the minds 
of men, and, save in the department of jurisprudence, and 
of medicine (at Alexandria), the Hellenic and Roman concep- 
tions of man and nature had disappeared. But even in the 

1 The catechetical schools, as distinct from pagan institutions, date from 
the close of the second century. 



184 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

defining and developing of Christian dogma, which had been 
going on side by side with the decay of ancient learning, there 
were no great minds engaged after the death of St Augustine 
(395 a.d.); and for 600 or 700 years after his death, the higher 
education, as it had been understood at the great ancient 
seats of learning, was practically non-existent. Ancient books 
and traditions, however, were fortunately preserved in the 
monasteries, and such learning as existed was to be found 
in these secluded religious communities. 

If we are to understand modern Europe, we must, at this 
point of history, turn our back on the disintegrating past and 
fix our eyes on the new constructive forces which were already 
beginning in the fourth and fifth centuries to mould the 
Europe of the future. These forces were essentially ethical 
in their character, as indeed are all the forces which ultimately 
determine and explain the history of nations. On the one 
hand, the Christian scheme of a philosophy of life, and on the 
other hand, the civil and the civilizing law of Rome, were the 
great living operative institutions. It was a grand conception, 
this new conception of a universal Church. Men organized not 
merely as political societies, but as a one all-embracing spiritual 
society independent of national distinctions — a community of 
souls whose ethical life and immortal destiny were the supreme 
concern, all else being subordinate, and of small (because 
transitory) importance. This Church idea ran parallel for a 
time with the civil and secular law of the State, but ere long 
it sought to overpower the latter, as it had already over- 
shadowed it. Hence the beginnings of a contest between two 
principles still alive in our own day, a contest which at bottom 
is a struggle between the civil and the spiritual conception of 
society. 

It was the spiritual power which alone, as might have been 
expected, concerned itself with education ; and nothing could 
consistently be held by it to contribute to the forming of the 
life of a human being save what trained up to the Church 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 185 

conception of human life, which was necessarily a theological 
conception. Greece and Rome, as sources of intellectual and 
moral teaching, had been blotted out, and the atmosphere 
breathed for at least 750 years was, essentially, that of Palestine. 
Men, however, could not live permanently bound and restricted 
by the theological idea and the narrow formalism of a 
crystallized creed. The perennial and ever-recurring claims of 
reason as reason had to be satisfied. It was in the eleventh 
century that the mind of Europe began to be stirred to activity 
in various directions outside the ecclesiastical. In the field of 
education it gave itself to the furtherance of the higher learning 
only, and not to the education of the people. And, I think, 
rightly. What the people chiefly wanted was good clerics, good 
physicians, good teachers, good lawyers ; and for this they had to 
look to higher schools, afterwards called universities. More is 
accomplished for the civilization and education of the masses 
by supplying every part of a country with good professional 
men than by teaching everybody their A, B, C. The educated 
professional few carry with them a standard of life wherever 
they go, while serving their fellow-men in all that concerns 
their daily needs and highest interests. 

The voluntary associations of learned men which repre- 
sented the awakening mind of Europe, and formed the nucleus 
of universities, were in truth engaged in restoring the thought 
of Greece and Rome in connection with the now dominant 
and organized Christianity. Roman law in its full historical 
sense, and Greek philosophy and medicine, formed the sub- 
stance and source of the new teaching. The men of the 12th 
century were, in truth, knitting together the broken continuity 
of the life of human reason. The thought of Greece and 
Rome had now to be co-ordinated with that of Palestine in the 
education of a modernized Europe. 

It will be apparent from what I have said that the modern 
Universities had now, and henceforth, for their function the 



1 86 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

carrying forward, in accordance with modern methods, of the 
united traditions of Palestine, Greece, and Rome, and, as 
pioneers of humanity, advancing the bounds of knowledge 
on all the ancient lines. They did this, however, and are 
still doing it, in no abstract spirit, but with a view to place 
men on a higher plane of rational life and also to prepare for 
the various professions, so that the whole nation may, through 
the professions, benefit by the endowments which have been 
left by far-seeing citizens, and the privileges which have been 
granted by wise monarcbs and statesmen. 

It was, in point of fact, this practical and professional side 
of the higher learning which engaged the attention of the 
originators of universities — then called Studio. Publico: or 
Generalia. The earliest of these institutions was, in fact, a 
medical college, with, of course, a preparatory training in arts 
(1060). It was situated in the ancient health-resort of Salerno, 
near Naples, and, if it did not owe its origin to the Benedictine 
monks of Monte Cassino, not far off, who had always a 
reputation as skilful leeches, it was certainly indebted to them 
for much of its early reputation. The next institution holding 
university rank was Bologna, which also was a specialist school 
devoting itself to Law (1080). The university of Paris may 
perhaps rank next in order 1 : theology constituted its special 
study, and teaching and the services of the Church its practical 
aim. But as theology required for its scientific treatment 
the study of philosophy (including under this ethics and 
Aristotelian physics), it naturally and early came about that for 
philosophy and theology Paris was eminent, and kept the lead 
of Europe for centuries. Oxford and Cambridge next arose as 
schools of arts and theology, and Montpellier, in France, had 
already established itself as a school of medicine. 

It was only after these universities, or specialist stadia 
publico, had existed for a considerable time that each began 

1 When we consider the standard of teaching at Notre-Dame, Paris 
may be almost regarded as cotemporary with Salerno and Bologna. 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 187 

to add to itself (and that very gradually) the "faculties" in which 
it was deficient; and accordingly, before the year 1300, no 
institution was regarded as a complete university which did 
not profess investigation and teaching in the four faculties of 
theology, law, medicine, and arts. By "arts," in its more 
restricted sense, was meant grammar, logic, rhetoric, and 
mathematics. 

It was not necessary, however, that all the faculties should 
be included in order to justify the title of " university," for 
this word meant nothing more than a Studium Publicum, or 
Universale, or Generate; that is to say, a school open to all 
the world which gave the higher teaching in one or more 
departments, and granted a qualification to practise the pro- 
fessions or to teach in the universities. To this day, many of the 
universities are incomplete in their faculties, and it is only of 
late years that great universities like Oxford and Cambridge 
have revived faculties which had been allowed to die, such as 
medicine and law. In the ancient university of St Andrews, in 
Scotland, there is even now no faculty of law, and Aberdeen is 
only forming one. The faculty of medicine also in St Andrews 
is only now being established on a proper basis, largely by means 
of a separate, but incorporated, college in Dundee. 

The above facts sufficiently show that the original aim of 
the higher schools of the modern world was practical and 
professional ; nor could they have existed on any other terms. 
It was at Paris alone that philosophical inquiry, embracing 
under philosophy questions of natural science in accordance 
with Hellenic tradition, truly flourished, leading in the course 
of time to freedom of speculation and to scientific investi- 
gation, and thus indirectly accomplishing much for the political 
liberties of Europe by promoting liberty of thought in abstract 
fields. 

The Renaissance of the 15th century only very tardily 
affected the work of the universities ; but during the last 100 
years the conception of their function and their duty to the 



188 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

nation has been expanding : and, in these days, our modern 
requirements have given an impulse which is being everywhere 
felt. The response to our demands for a larger interpretation 
of humanism, by assigning a high place to history, economics, 
modern languages and literatures in the ordinary graduation 
curriculum, is doubtless tardy ; but this is largely due to want 
of funds and insufficient pressure from the outside. 

Let us now advert to the constitution of the first universi- 
ties, which is the next point of interest as bearing on the 
university of the future. 

Universities were, to begin with, not founded either by 
Pope or King. They were voluntary associations or colleges 
of teachers, who offered to instruct all who came to them with 
a view to the different professions. They lived by fees. They 
had no public buildings. The lectures of the masters or 
doctors were given in their own houses or in hired halls. 
Their great ceremonies were performed in churches borrowed 
for the occasion. These voluntary associations of learned men 
were free, in so far at least as they professed and taught in 
independence of monastic restrictions, although, it is true, 
monks taught, and, in course of time, monastic orders tried 
to get possession of the academic machinery. The uni- 
versity, accordingly, is to be regarded as not only marking 
the beginning of professional studies, but as the beginning of 
the liberation of the mind of Europe from the monastic and 
ecclesiastical control of the earlier half of the Middle Ages. It 
is an exaggeration, I think, to say that the university was a 
"lay" movement in antagonism to the Church, but it was 
unquestionably a lay institution and contained the seeds of 
intellectual liberty. To the university accordingly the modern 
world is deeply indebted. It can never pay its debt, so great 
is it. And, resting on a historical basis and discarding merely 
theoretical views, we may affirm this, in addition to certain 
other propositions already implicitly laid down as emerging 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 189 

from the above survey of academic origins, viz. that freedom 
of thought and speech is essential to the idea of a university, 
just as it was in the inmost heart of them when they began 
to -live. 

Further, I would say that these self-constituted, self- 
governing communities moulded themselves, consciously or 
unconsciously, on the mediaeval guilds. They were guilds of 
learning — literary guilds. Of these guilds even the scholars 
were, in some cases, members, and the Masters (afterwards 
called regents and professors) held very much the same 
relation to the scholars as a master in an industrial guild 
held to his apprentices. The masters were equal one with 
another and elected their own rectors (in some cases with the 
concurrence and votes of the scholars). From this historical 
fact emerges another mark or note of a true university. It is 
a guild, republic, or commonwealth resting on intellect and 
character alone, and in no way dependent for the position of 
its members on the adventitious circumstances of fortune or 
birth. 

Ere long the Pope granted Charters of Privilege to these 
institutions, and soon after kings and emperors began formally 
to found them within their dominions for the benefit, primarily, 
of their own subjects, though they were open to all the world. 
The stream of young men, constantly traversing Great Britain 
and Europe to study at Paris and Bologna, was thus gradually 
reduced. But it can be easily understood that the formal 
founding of universities and the granting of privileges gradually 
abstracted somewhat from the freedom and independence of 
the learned communities. But the freedom, independence, and 
autonomy were never wholly lost, and, under new forms, they 
substantially exist to this day in the leading universities of 
Europe. In so far as a learned institution is not autonomous, 
but governed by a single head or an outside committee or board, 
it is not the ideal university, but rather a magnified college or 
school, however great its reputation may be. There can be no 



190 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

doubt that it is the freedom of thought and speech, the personal 
freedom, and the republican equality and autonomy of universi- 
ties which, more than anything else, have attracted to them the 
intellects of Europe. The university has existed from the first 
in the interests of the people, and, under democratic conditions, 
it is of vital importance that universities should be self-governing 
and free, and so be in a position to offer resistance to temporary 
phases of popular feeling or political despotism. 

I may now sum up the characteristic notes of a university 
in its modern and best form as these are suggested by the 
above brief survey, • and propound them anew as the essential 
marks of the university of the future : — 

i. The university must embrace the whole tradition of 
philosophy (including under this religion), science, and learning 
(language, philology, literature, history, law, etc.), and each 
subject must be represented by a professional expert, with 
such lecturers, assistants, and tutors as may be required, 
working round him as centre. 

2. As the university exists for knowledge which all are to 
share, each professor is under obligation to advance the bounds 
of his subject and contribute them to the world outside the 
university (and this should be done at the expense of the 
university, if need be). 

3. Each professor, with his staff, must teach the subject, 
and the method of investigation peculiar to it, to all who may 
come to him, whether they intend to graduate or not. The 
professor is there to teach as well as to prosecute learning. 

4. Each university must so group its studies as to train 
for all the professions, and so benefit the world at large by 
sending out its ambassadors and representatives among the 
people in every department of intellectual, as distinct from 
industrial, activity, so that all may share in the thought of 
universities. 

5. Each university must, as a guild of investigators and 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 191 

teachers, be a literary republic, self-governing and free, with 
only such restrictions and right of supervision as the State may, 
in the general interest, determine. 

6. As a guild, each university must train apprentices 
and specialists, so as to secure the apostolic succession of 
competent representatives. 

7. As the guardians of the realm of knowledge and 
ministers of science, each university must be at once a 
storehouse of the learning of the past and a leader of thought. 
To it, graduates, who, wherever they may be, always remain 
members of the guild, should be encouraged to return from 
time to time to find there (without payment) the last results of 
investigation — each in his own department of social activity. 
And this for the general weal. 

I hold, further, that an Institution, however encyclopaedic 
and however free, is not worthy of the name University which 
does not recognize as sum and consummation of all its teaching 
the science of Man and the conduct of life. It is thought on 
man as man which has yielded all our religions and philo- 
sophies, and to which all sciences are merely contributory ; 
and the modern question is how, in the midst of the diverse 
and conflicting studies that claim a place, the end and issue of 
all study can be so kept before the student as to lift him out 
of the particular studies, that tend wholly to engross him, into 
a personal relation with the "things by which men live." 
Literature, art, philosophy, religion — these constitute the true 
life of man, and they should in some form or other enter into 
the culture of every youth who is to go forth as the legitimate 
son of a university and not as the bastard child of a specialist 
school. Somehow or other, all specialist and professional 
training should be liberalized. In view of these things, it is 
a matter of constant surprise to me that men concerned for the 
"ancient studies" should have so often failed to welcome the 
introduction into our graduation courses of modern literatures, 
history and economics and of such applications of philosophy as 



192 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

Education. In their zeal for the form of Hellenism they have 
become pedantic and anti-Hellenic. 

The urgent present-day question is "To what extent are the 
ancient universities to adapt themselves to modern require- 
ments in the application of science to the industrial arts?" 
viz. Engineering, Mining, Agriculture, Manufactories of all 
kinds of products — even bread and beer. To a certain extent 
some of these subjects have already found a footing in our 
universities. This seemed to be the only way of giving them 
the necessary status. But now, the pressure of international 
rivalry has given rise to what may be regarded as a new 
university movement and led to the founding of Technical 
Colleges. I cannot but think that it is in the true interests 
of mankind, that instruction in all the practical applications of 
science which have to do with bodily needs, should be outside 
the universities and find a home in separate Technical Colleges. 
In the interests of these Colleges I say so, as well as out of 
regard for the higher purposes of our ancient Institutions. 
I have elsewhere given to the fully equipped Technical 
College the name Industrial University : and I hold that all 
endowments which have industrial ends in view should go to 
these modern Institutions, and that, where they attain to a 
university standard of teaching, they should be affiliated to 
the old universities as the Technical Faculty 1 . If the in- 
dustrial applications of science take their place within the old 
universities, there is a danger of their overshadowing the 
subjects which pertain to the higher interests of humanity. 

As to the financial support of universities : It is quite 
clear that if these Institutions are to accomplish their work 
for the nation they cannot be self-supporting. Even primary 
schools cannot be self-supporting, much less secondary schools, 
least of all universities. They have to look ultimately not to 
individual benefactors, but to the whole body of the people 

1 Veterinary Colleges teaching on a university standard might also be 
affiliated. 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 193 

for maintenance. They are entitled to it in a sense in which 
no other institution is entitled to it, because, as I have shown, 
they work for every profession and for the whole nation, and not 
for a part of it only. Moreover, they know no sect or party in 
their official capacity. Let the idea and purpose of universities, 
as I have endeavoured to explain it, be thoroughly understood 
by the people, and the people will not grudge their fitting 
maintenance. In Germany, where the university idea has been 
most fully developed, the State contributes 72 per cent, of the 
total expenditure. In England and America (outside the State 
universities) the main source of revenue is private endowment 
and the fees of the students. In Scotland the State contributes 
about ^70,000 a year. 

As regards the students in statu papillari — these are 
presumed to enter on their various groups of studies fitted 
to do so, not merely by acquired knowledge, but by maturity 
of mind. Graduation in this or that subject or group, so far 
from being essential to a university, may be said to be, in these 
days, almost a superstition. Universities, it is true, have 
inherited the sole privilege of granting degrees ; but they do 
not exist for this purpose. They exist to prosecute study 
for the sake of mankind, and to equip young men for the 
work of life and the prosecution of knowledge. In the interests 
of the people and for their protection, however, it is necessary 
that every man and woman entering a profession should have 
a certified qualification, and this we call a "degree." Such a 
qualification is best to be had through universities, to which the 
privilege from the first belonged, and the State should always 
depute it to them in order to save the duplication of agencies, 
and to give strength and dignity to their highest educational 
institutions. But, except for this specific purpose, degrees are 
mere accidents of a university ; and I sometimes think that, if 
there were less competition for honours in graduation and for 
the rewards attached to these, our universities would produce 
more and teach better. In any case, few, I hope, will 
l. l. 13 



194 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

question the position that every professor and every subject 
should be accessible to the general public without reference 
to graduation. 

Intelligent artisans, while frankly acknowledging the benefits 
they receive from universities, may yet sometimes feel aggrieved 
that they are not, for want of the necessary means, open to their 
sons. In a sound social system, the rise and fall of families is 
necessary to the health of the body politic and to the stability 
of social order. To facilitate this, reasonable provision should 
always be made to secure for scientific investigation and the pro- 
fessions the really able children of the poorer classes ; but only 
the really able. Much nonsense has been talked about the 
" ladder " from the gutter to the university. Make that ladder 
easy of ascent to the ordinary youth, and, ere long, young 
men, of creditable diligence but of ordinary capacity, will find 
themselves, among a crowd of competing graduates, elevated 
to genteel destitution and supreme discontent, instead of 
earning an honest solid wage in the service of society in 
some congenial occupation. In this "ladder" phrase of the 
popular orator we encounter, it seems to me, both a super- 
stition and a vulgarity. A superstition because many seem 
to imagine that the "higher education" can be obtained 
within the sacred walls of the university alone. This is in 
these days notoriously not the fact. Professional fitness, it 
is true, can alone be adequately obtained in such institutions 
(including Technical Colleges), but education can now be ob- 
tained outside them by all who have it in them to care about 
their own intellectual and moral progress. Libraries, cheap 
literature and lecture courses, have placed within the reach 
of every youth in our towns (and will ere long do the same 
for our villages also) all the education a man needs for 
either this world or the next. I guard myself so far as to 
say that the "ladder" has a meaning, and it should exist, 
as it has always existed in Scotland, for the specially able; 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 195 

but I hold, in the interests of the climbers themselves, that 
it should be difficult to mount. Were a university course 
necessary to education and culture of a human being, the 
ladder should then be made easy to climb ; but to suppose 
this is to be the victim of a survival of an effete idea. Edu- 
cation is what all want, and all may now get it, if they choose, 
without going to universities. 

I have often said that true education — the culture of the 
whole rational and emotional nature of a man — is to be got 
only through humanistic studies. What I desire now to urge 
is that education in this true sense is now within the reach of 
the vast majority of those who never enter universities. It is 
through the personal enjoyment of literature, art, and specu- 
lative thought that culture can alone come. A young man 
may have "got up" the masterpieces of Greece and Rome, 
but if it has been done for an external purpose and he has not 
enjoyed a living contact with the great minds of the past, he 
is less cultivated than an artisan whose intellect and heart 
respond with lively emotion to Shakespeare, Burns and Tenny- 
son and to the ethical and spiritual inspirations of the Old and 
New Testaments. The phrase by which men would in these 
days conjure, viz., "ladder from the gutter to the university," 
embodies an anachronism in so far as it regards university life 
as essential to education. It misses the meaning of human life 
and shuts its eyes to present facts. There is a " professional " 
and expert knowledge of subjects, which a university can alone 
fully give ; and there is an educative knowledge which is not 
restricted within Academic walls. 

On the other hand, it is of great national importance that 
as large a proportion as possible of those who can afford 
the time should be drawn into the universities and go 
through a regular curriculum ; and to ensure this, it is in- 
cumbent on universities to extend liberally the conditions of 
graduation by providing courses of cognate studies which 
will attract young men who aim at culture, but who do not 

13 — 2 



196 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

contemplate a "profession" — Merchants, Diplomatists, Publi- 
cists, Politicians. To accomplish this, and to attract the kind 
of student to whom I refer, modern subjects must be put on a 
substantial equality with the classical tongues. To doubt the 
value of the intellectual discipline which a young man obtains 
by translating into Latin or Greek prose is a mark of ignorance ; 
but the question is, can this discipline be, at least approxi- 
mately, got on modern lines? Have the most distinguished 
thinkers and masters of literary expression in Europe been ex- 
perts in Latin or Greek prose ? It is also a mark of ignorance to 
maintain that a man is fully equipped for linguistic and literary 
appreciation who is ignorant of the masterpieces of antiquity. 
But we cannot allow a consideration such as this to govern a 
national system of education. It gives too narrow a basis. 

I have said also that the "university ladder" is a vulgarity 
as well as a superstition, because there underlies it the notion 
that, only by rising into a higher social class in life than that 
into which he was born, can a man fulfil his function as 
a man, and be also "happy." Provision must of course be 
made for the absorption, into the professions and the work of 
investigation, of the very best brains of the poorer classes : 
but, speaking generally, there can be no doubt that the 
average man will best attain both education and •" happiness " 
by doing thoroughly well the business for which he is best 
suited, it matters not what it is. Infinitely more important 
than the "ladder" are such industrial arrangements as shall 
admit of social relaxation, literary interests, and intelligent 
political study on the part of all. It is not desirable to tempt 
men into professions. The gospel of "getting on" is after 
all a devil's gospel. All any man can rationally desire is the 
means of adequately maintaining himself and his family under 
civilized conditions — conditions which will enable him to make 
the best of his humanity, while doing effectively his specific 
duty in the social organization. 

If we might venture on the hazardous work of prediction 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 197 

we might say that the university of the future will be simply 
the ideal university of the present ; and this, as we have 
seen, is a product of the best traditions of the past. But 
is there nothing else and nothing new that they can in these 
days be expected to accomplish for the nation which supports 
them ? This they can do— they can further extend their aims 
so as to embrace the theoretical treatment of all subjects 
that admit of scientific and philosophical handling. The 
nation is entitled to claim this comprehensiveness. Exclusive- 
ness in particular lines of study will be fatal to universities 
when they finally rest on the popular will, as they must do 
in democratic countries; and it ought to be fatal to them. 
A university which imagines that it attains the ends of its 
existence by the production of a " classical fellow " is digging 
its own grave. Vast now are the fields of knowledge, vast 
the intellectual and ethical interests of mankind. In every 
field the university, while not breaking with the past, has 
to adapt itself to the present and the future, and in every 
department to investigate, to propound, and to guide. As 
soon as the broad current of the life of humanity passes them 
by, leaving their walls untouched by its living waters, they will 
perish, as some have perished in the past. 

If the above be a correct statement of the social function 
of a university, it follows that a body constituted solely to 
examine for degrees usurps the name of university. It has only 
one characteristic of a true university, and that is an accidental 
and adventitious, rather than an essential, characteristic. It 
is, in my opinion, vital to true education that those who teach 
should also examine on the lines of study which they have laid 
down ; assessors being appointed to check narrowness, and to 
secure an equitable exercise of a power which affects materially 
the rights of students. 

There is still another way in which the university of the 
future will continue to extend its benefits and consequent 
influence ; and this, by bringing them in immediate contact 



I98 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE; 

with the people, will react on them by stimulating their 
vitality, for it will supply to them some of the breath which 
sustains the great world outside. I refer to the Extension 
Lecture system. 

I am well aware that a sacred few who monopolize " true 
culture," and whose intellectual life revolves round elegant 
sentences and the settlement of all questions by epigrams, 
despise this form of university activity. The idea, however, is 
older and more respectable than these men think, for it will be 
found in the New Atlantis of Bacon. No doubt this recent 
movement requires criticism, and will be the better for it. 
Above all, it requires to be purged of the greatest of all the 
evils that attend it — examinations and marks. But who origin- 
ated this essential departure from the idea of genuine education 
but the universities themselves, where examinations and marks 
flourish rampant, destroy unencumbered freedom of study, and 
tend to quench original investigation and devotion to truth 
irrespective of " rewards " ? If we put an end to the false 
notion that extension lectures can of themselves give a univer- 
sity education, what but good can come of courses of lectures 
which widen the interests and help to direct the thinking of 
the middle and artisan classes ? Every good movement has its 
attendant evils. 

Professor Mahaffy, in a Nineteenth Century article, thinks 
it a poor result of the extension of popular education that 
those who have learned to read, read only trashy stories 
and partisan newspapers. But what is the result of secondary 
education among the upper classes, not "persons of the 
poorer sort" (whom Professor Mahaffy feels to come between 
the wind and his Academic nobility) ? What does the Public 
School boy, who has been bred on what he calls the "great 
old studies," read? What does the young lady peruse in 
the boudoir after she has been duly "finished"? Who reads 
the "odious weekly press," with its adulteries, society scandals, 
fashion news, "fashionable intelligence," etc.? Professor Mahaffy 



AND THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE 199 

seems to think that it is the board-school boy and girl. Does 
he forget that these journals, with few exceptions, cost sixpence? 
In truth, the argument of the too clever Irishman is an argument 
against all education except that of the College don, who is to 
sit in his chamber and gaze with rapt eye at the "great old 
studies," although he probably has not read, except for pro- 
fessional purposes, a play of Sophocles or a line of Lucretius, 
since he used them for the double purpose of gaining money 
and place. Does he really, in his heart, think that the College 
"common room" product of the "great old studies" is the 
triumph of civilization ? 

Let me say, in conclusion, that the danger to which the 
university of the future is exposed, is interference with their 
liberty of thought and government on the part of the demo- 
cracy. Slow to apprehend remote issues, and swayed by the 
impulse of the moment, the people may be intolerant of 
abstract study, and may also resent teaching which runs 
counter to their own temporary convictions and supposed 
interests. To obviate this, we can only look to the general 
diffusion of education, and to the action of the universities 
themselves in casting aside all narrow conceptions of their 
duties to the public. 



200 



X. 

GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 1 . 

I shall first consider what may be called the preliminaries 
of all method whatsoever in their specific relation to geography 
as a school-subject, — viz., the " IV/iat" and the "Why" of 
geographical instruction. I propose, thereafter, to speak of the 
" How " of geographical teaching ; and without pretending to 
exhaust the subject, I shall, in this connection, lay before you 
some of the leading rules of Method in their special relation 
to Geography as a Jvr/W/-subject. 

Preliminaries of Method. 

I. The "What." — Geography would, according to its 
etymology, be defined simply as a description of the earth — 
not necessarily including a description either of men on the 
earth, or of beasts or plants. The definition would comprise, 
however, atmosphere, climate, rain, hail, snow and thunder, 
and the movements of parts of the earth — currents, rivers, 
earthquakes, volcanoes, glaciers. A description of the earth 
in all these respects, if confined to them, would be an im- 
portant part of Physical Geography, and this would necessarily 
embrace a certain amount of Geology as a part of the larger 

1 Delivered before the Royal Geographical Society of Scotland, 
Edinburgh, July 16, 1886. 



GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 201 

Physical Geography. But we should have not merely to 
describe but to explain — that is to say, to unfold the character- 
istic causes of these phenomena and the relations and harmony 
'of all the parts. Even in this restricted sense, Geography, 
properly taught, would be the most interesting, and, with the 
single exception of Literature, probably the most nutritive, the 
most feeding (if I may so speak), and therefore the most culti- 
vating, of all school -subjects, although defective as a discipline. 
It is not to be despised by the classical master because it is a 
useful subject : to be useful is not to be utilitarian. It is the 
perception of " use " that gives interest to studies and stimulates 
the intelligence of young learners. 

But it so happens, and this not solely owing to unthinking 
traditionary habit, that the term " Geography " has a wider 
range. For how can I speak, in any adequate sense, of soil 
and climate, of elevations and depressions and movements of 
the earth, without reference to the plant life and animal life 
which they support, and the kinds of these in any particular 
locality as determined by particular circumstances and general 
environment? And how shall I speak of animals, and omit 
the paragon of animals — man? And how shall I speak of 
man without considering types of race — the Mongolian, the 
Tartar, the Semitic, the Aryan ? And when I touch upon the 
Aryan, how can I resist the fine field of observation supplied 
by the various species under this head — the Hellenic, the 
Italic, the Slavonic, the Teutonic? Still further, when speaking 
of these, how can I intelligently do so — how can I convey the 
mere facts, without relating them causally to physical and 
climatic conditions? But when I begin to do this, I find myself 
engaged with one aspect of the philosophy of history. I con- 
template, say, the Mesopotamian basin or the Nile valley in all 
their physical characteristics, and I place men and beasts and 
plants there ; and then I may almost turn round on an intelli- 
gent pupil, and ask him to predict the great outlines of the social 
and industrial history of these regions. For, if my class has been 



202 GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

well prepared, I may call on it to tell me the products of these 
countries, to anticipate their industries and commerce, to fore- 
cast the tendency at least of their religion and literature — indeed 
all the potentialities of their social and economic life, and all 
their possibilities of civilization. When, under my guidance, the 
class has exhausted its predictions, the actual history becomes 
a mere filling-in of details. When these details fail to correspond 
to our anticipations, the reasons of the failure — the omission 
by us of some condition of life or characteristic of Race, it may 
be, or the intervention of some influence from without — are 
themselves a fresh source of knowledge, and a stimulus to 
thought. The discovery of unexpected causal relations conveys 
a historical lesson, and contributes to that intelligent interpreta- 
tion of everyday experience which is the main end of all our 
education on the intellectual side ; for what is our aim in the 
realistic department of instruction, if not the placing of men in 
a rational attitude to the world past and present, and to the 
conditions of life by which they are now encompassed? 

I may now, perhaps, after these remarks, venture to define 
(not Geography as a scientific pursuit but) School Geography 
as a co-ordination of the elementary aspects of many sciences 
in their relation to the dwelling-place, the life and the works 
of man. This is an answer to the preliminary " What." 

The "Why." — All possible subjects of instruction fall, 
speaking generally, into two classes — the formal or abstract 
(e.g. arithmetic, mathematics, language as grammar, logic), 
the main purpose of which is discipline; and the real or 
concrete, the main purpose of which is nutrition, and with and 
through this, training as distinct from discipline. Of the latter, 
the prime subjects are, — first, language as literature, and second, 
geography, as above liberally interpreted. Geography is all- 
embracing ; it is rich and abundant in its material, and conse- 
quently has claims on the teacher of a paramount kind. 

For, observe, boys (and men too) are hungry for the real. 
The formal in teaching is " too much with us." I find a class 



GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 203 

of bright girls of fourteen years of age working sums in 
advanced arithmetic. Does any rational man doubt that 
lessons, say on Egypt, or Greece, or Italy, or Britain, con- 
veying all that is included in the geography of these countries, 
would do more for the minds of these girls than discount or 
stocks ? 

Again, is it not an universally admitted principle that 
children are educated best through the sensible, and that 
up to fourteen, and indeed long after it (and sometimes 
indeed for the whole of life), the formal and abstract does 
not either discipline or cultivate as the real does? It 
is through things, and events as things, and thoughts as 
things, that children and men and women live and grow. 
Discipline merely sharpens the instrument by which they 
perceive and think. If this be so, then why is not this fruitful 
educational principle applied ? If there be any difference of 
opinion about the principle as a principle, by all means let us 
discuss it. But if it be accepted, as I believe it universally is, 
why is it not applied ? Now in the department of the real of 
sense, the Thing (and I write this word in capital letters) is Geo- 
graphy. Teach this Thing as a thing, and your results will be 
almost sure. And what admirable results ! The engaging of the 
desire of the intelligence, if I may so speak ; that is to say, 
the giving of a daily exercise of the intelligence so pleasing in 
its nature that the mind will always desire its repetition. You 
thus ensure an activity of mind which will not stop short of the 
Thing — which, indeed, by the very nature of the intelligence 
itself, cannot stop short at the Thing ; for, once intellect 
moves, it moves for ever. It is irrepressible; it is so irre- 
pressible as to be dangerous to society — so irrepressible as to 
be full of blessing to society. What a " result," I say ! You, 
as an educator, have now attained your purpose on the 
intellectual side at least ; and you may fold your hands in 
the consciousness of a work well done. In Geographical 
teaching, it is Nature and History that engage you. You 



204 GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

have seen into many things when teaching the thing. Climate, 
for example, has brought your pupils into immediate contact 
with the elements of physics, while the men who inhabit a 
country have brought your pupils face to face with history 
in its origins, with civilization as a growth, with economics 
as involved in the account you give of that country's 
industries. 

You will thus have attained your educational purpose, I 
repeat, on the intellectual side. But am I right so to restrict 
my argument? Will the mind so exercised on the causes of 
things not also be constrained to exercise itself on the principles 
of actions! Will it not be more open than ever before to 
moral truths, as governing the conduct of men? Will it not 
have seen the working of moral principles in the characteristics 
of nations, in their economics, and in their national and 
individual life, and so have been furnished with a rich store 
of concrete teachings — worth a cart-load of abstract preachings? 

Were the " Why " of geographical teaching to be summed 
up by the one word " information," it could have little or no 
interest for the thoughtful teacher. It is because of its 
intellectual and moral effects chiefly that Geography claims an 
important place in the education of youth. There is probably 
no one subject so prolific of matter for independent thought 
and judgment on the affairs of life. By means of it, too, 
we not merely furnish moral material, so to speak, but we 
extend the sympathies of the pupil, and lay the foundation 
of that sentiment of humanity which is the necessary counter- 
poise to narrow and parochial prejudices. Such teaching, 
accordingly, tends to comprehensiveness of mind, to the cor- 
rection of hasty opinions, to the strengthening of patriotism, 
but at the same time to the moderation of insular patriotic 
insolence. It broadens the narrowness of the young, and 
the selfishness and exclusiveness of the adult. It is a sworn 
foe to the prig. It widens intelligence and enriches the 
whole mind, furnishing not only matter for reasonings, but 



GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 205 

nutrition to the ethical sentiments and a stimulus to the 
imagination. 

Need I add that, in an island home like ours, dependent, 
for its very existence, on its industrial relations on the one 
hand and the continual flow of emigration on the other, a 
knowledge of our connections with other men and other lands, 
especially our dominions beyond the seas, is essential to the 
right understanding and guidance of our own lives. There 
are men and women to this day so grossly ignorant of their 
geographical and human relations that they shrink from cross- 
ing the bounds of their parishes : a still greater number who 
dread a step beyond the limits of their counties. As an 
economic instrument, then, no less than as an intellectual 
and moral instrument, geography is probably unsurpassed by 
any other realistic subject of the school curriculum, excepting 
always literature. 

Having briefly indicated the answers to the two pre- 
liminary questions of method, viz. the " What" and the 
"IJViy," we may now proceed to consider a few of the rules 
of method itself; in other words, the "How " of the teaching — 
Method-proper. 

The " How." — And here I would first say to the teacher : 
i. Begin by considering the end. All method in teaching a 
subject is to be governed by the ultimate end of your 
instruction ; or, to put it more pointedly, by the concluding 
and consummating lesson you propose to give at the end 
of years of teaching — let us say, at the time your pupil, at 
the age of seventeen or eighteen, is leaving the secondary 
school. Now, in the department of geography, what kind of 
lesson is that? Let us figure it to ourselves. It is a lesson 
which, starting from the physical geography of a country, 
brings into view climatic conditions, and, in the consideration 
of the causes of these, involves a knowledge of elementary 
physics. It then proceeds to discuss the type of man — the 



206 GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

race — which has taken possession of the country under con- 
sideration ; it shows how the necessities of life, concurring with 
physical conditions and configuration, have given rise to its 
industries and commerce, and have determined the localization 
of its towns and fortresses ; how morality has arisen and social 
order has been maintained ; how all these things, taken 
together, have moulded, through contact with the opposing 
interests and ideas of other nations, its military power, its art, 
and its literature- — have, in short, made that nation all that it 
has been and can be. It overflows into history and goes on 
to tell how and to what extent the nation has contributed 
to the progress of humanity; it explains how it is that this 
country, and not that, has become the battle-field of rival 
empires. We next call upon our pupils to draw the country, 
putting in strongly its physical characteristics, and entering, 
in due causal relation, the leading towns and centres of popu- 
lation ; and, finally, to write a paper on the basis of the lesson 
we have given. This, very briefly summed, is a geography 
lesson as it ought to be given to youths in the last year of 
their secondary-school work. It may have to be spread over 
several days ; but when finished, we shall have given a kind 
of knowledge highly educative in its effect, because it is all 
given in relation to causes, and which is applicable, since 
it contains general principles, to other countries and peoples. 
By keeping this our last lesson in view, we are guided at 
every previous stage of our progress. So much for the first 
rule of method. 

2. Begin at the beginning. This, the second rule, is like 
the first, a governing rule. No teaching of a subject in its 
final stages will take effect on the mind of the average pupil, 
unless we have prepared the way for the last lesson by a long 
and slow process of previous instruction which anticipates the 
end. This rule is apt to be disregarded. Some, for example, 
imagine that if you introduce boys of seventeen suddenly to 
literature or religion, they will comprehend them and take to 



GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 207 

them. The exceptional boy may, but not the average boy 
— i.e. not 90 per cent, of boys. So with a subject like 
geography, although it is more within the grasp of the ordinary 
intelligence. A final lesson, such as we have sketched above, 
would usually have for its sole response dull eyes and languid 
minds. The mass of boys would probably describe the lesson, 
in their peculiar jargon, by saying that the master had been 
"jawing " away for half-an-hour about Greece or Italy or Spain, 
as the case might be. As well might you expect boys to write 
Greek Iambics all at once without a long preliminary training, 
as expect them to comprehend and appreciate a final lesson in 
geography without a long, slow absorption, spread over years, 
of those elements of knowledge which alone put life and 
significance into the large generalizations and instructive 
suggestions of your concluding conversation. You must begin, 
then, from the beginning. 

3. And this brings us to a third rule of method — " The 
instruction must, at every stage of school teaching, be adapted to 
the age and progress of the pupils." This compels us to put to 
ourselves the question, " At what age shall I begin geography 
in a school ? — and is it possible, at the age which I may fix, so 
to begin it as really to contribute to the final lesson in all its 
detail, all its breadth, all its generalizing, all its reasoning ? " 

Now my answer to the first question is, that geography, like 
every other subject 1 , is to be begun in the Infant-school. And, 
having so committed myself, I am bound to show that the 
Infant-school instruction affords a basis for the final lesson. 
Nay more, that a right understanding of the Infant-school 
lesson reveals an absolute harmony and coincidence with the 
right conception of the final lesson. I am strong for unity in 
method. I hold that if the first lesson in any subject cannot 
be shown to be the best foundation for the final lesson, then 

1 Is Greek to be begun in the Infant-school ? No, but language is. Is 
mathematics to be begun in the Infant-school ? No, but lessons in form and 
number are. 



208 GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

either my conception of the final lesson is wholly mistaken or 
my conception of the initiatory lesson is all astray. But the 
harmony and coincidence do exist ; and the initiatory lesson, 
rightly understood, admirably supports and illustrates the final 
lesson. For here I am confronted with a fourth rule, the 
application of which solves the difficulty ; for, be it observed, 
all sound rules of method support each other. 

4. The fourth rule — " The real is to be taught through the 
real — things of sense through the senses." Now this very obvious 
rule is worth considering for a moment, if I am to justify my 
position and establish my argument. 

In the final lesson, what am I dealing with ? The names 
of countries, towns, and rivers merely, as is the usual way of 
teaching geography ? Certainly not ; this is not geography at 
all, but only a very small part of it, to be rightly called 
topography — just as dates and successions of monarchs and 
battles is not history at all, but merely a subordinate part of 
it, called chronology. Let me recall my final lesson : I find 
that I was speaking of mountains, lakes and rivers, of the 
atmosphere, of climate, of industries, of the implements or 
machinery of those industries, of harbours, of ships, of 
products, of exports and imports, of the people, of their 
arts, of their religion, and so forth. A large text — but, after 
all, I was only speaking of a portion of the surface of the earth, 
and its inhabitants and their doings. Now, I have a portion 
of this same earth here at my school door, and people on it 
living and working. This is all at my door, I say, and subject 
to all my senses of touch, of sight, and of hearing. My course 
in the Infant-school, then, is clear. It is to give those rudi- 
mentary and particular conceptions which are the indispensable 
basis of my final generalizations and reasonings, and to do so 
by means of things submitted to the senses and close at hand. 
We are dealing with a realistic subject, and all our teaching 
must therefore be realistic. I take advantage of the window, 
or go outside, to look out on the portion of the earth within 



GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 209 

my immediate range ; and I draw upon the experience of the 
little children as they walk to and from school, and extract from 
them that experience. Thus they are introduced to plains, to 
hills, to streams, to cultivated land and uncultivated land, to 
rocks and stones, to herbs and flowers and trees, to animals, to 
products, to men and their various industries, to sizes, dis- 
tances, relations in place, buildings, names of places, &c. &c. 
This is Nature-study. I call on them to bring to school 
specimens of the portable objects by which they are surrounded 
— leaves of the different kinds of trees, the different grains, &c. 
From this I gradually pass to manufactures, as illustrated 
in their own clothes and books, and so introduce them to 
those vegetable products and manufactured products for which 
they are dependent on other parts of their own country or 
of the world. 

The pupils see for themselves the physical and industrial 
characteristics, and name to me what they see ; and as to those 
other names which are unfamiliar, I explain them by the help 
of the school play-ground and the school supply of water. 
When once they have, in the course of time, supplied me with 
a description of their own parish and all it yields, as a 
foundation for geography, I proceed on an old tin tray, with 
the help of clay or mud and a little water, to model it roughly; 
and, on the same tray, I illustrate to their senses an island, a 
strait, a cape, a promontory, and so forth. I ask them about 
the climate as my lessons advance, about cold and heat, and 
their obvious effects on growth, and the kinds of things grown. 
I have now constructed a physical model of the parish — a 
bird's-eye view ; and I have drawn out of my pupils its whole 
geography, in so far as they can yet grasp it. I now transfer 
the model to the black-board with the help of variously 
coloured chalks. 

Now, what have I really been doing ? I have been giving 
in the particular, and by means of the direct contact of the 
senses, almost all that I propose to give in my final lesson, nine 

L. L. 14 



2IO GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

or ten years after, in a large and generalised world-view. This 
course of procedure, constantly revised or referred back to, 
gradually builds up true geographical conceptions in the largest 
and richest sense. And what is the result? The fulfilment 
of the educational requirement to train the senses of children, 
to cultivate their powers of observation — the fulfilment, further, 
of the duty of every teacher to give, with a view to sense- 
training and information, object-lessons. In later stages, when 
I ask them to reproduce what they have been taught by filling 
up an outline map, and then by drawing a map, I teach drawing : 
all this by merely teaching geography as it ought to be taught. 
So remarkable is the harmony of method-rules — so distinctly 
does each contribute to all the others, if they are sound. The 
initiatory lessons, it will now appear, properly given, contain all 
the elements of the final lesson. 

A fifth rule of method now demands our attention. 

5. And this is, " That all knowledge must grow out of what 
is already known, in order that the growth may be organic, and 
not mechanical merely." But we find that we do not need even 
to consider this rule, for it is already complied with in the 
mode of procedure which we have just described. So har- 
monious, so mutually helpful, I repeat, are all sound rules 
of method. 

But there are other rules which are also complied with, for 
we are told that memory has to be cultivated ; and a rule of 
method here is — 

6. Association strengthens the memory ; therefore link your 
teachings. But what association so strong as the association 
of all our knowledge of a subject, with the familiar objects 
of our own daily lives, out of which we have made the teaching 
of geography spring ? — what association so strong as the organic 
connexion which this mode of teaching establishes in the 
mind? 

But there is still a seventh rule of all sound method, which 
deserves attention, viz. : — 



GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 211 

7. A pupil in learning should instruct himself, the master 
being only the cooperator, the guide and the remover of obstructions. 
This is not only the best way of teaching, but gives the pupil 
a sense of power and of self-achieved progress. But this rule 
too has been already observed ; for when I extract the basis of 
geography from the child's own experience, and from his own 
observation of things around him, he is teaching himself ; and 
when I call upon him to reproduce by drawing, he is then also 
self-instructing. 

8. Teaching, like charity, begins at home. — In accordance 
with these various rules, and starting from our initiatory 
lessons, the pupil extends his knowledge from his parish to 
his county, and so on. The consideration of these steps in 
the building-up of geographical knowledge suggests a few 
remarks as to detail. 

It will be said, "All this we know ; in every technical book 
on method we are told to begin with the parish," &x. My 
answer is, that I do not pretend to have made discoveries, but 
merely to put things in my own way, and, above all, to shew 
the simplicity and unity of pedagogic method ; but I must 
honestly confess that I do not find geography begun and 
ended, in such schools as I have visited, on the method I have 
been expounding. It may, notwithstanding, be done here and 
there 1 . 

Let me now illustrate further the third rule which bears on 

1 The only objection that can be taken to the true method of teaching 
Geography is, I think, that it is not always applicable to town schools. 
But the great majority of town schools are within easy reach of all that is 
absolutely necessary for sound teaching and with the improved apparatus 
now available, including lantern-slides, much may be done. London, no 
doubt, presents great difficulties : but what a happy chance is there afforded 
to a paternal Board of giving the children a day in the country at the 
expense of the rates, on the plea that the excursion is a geographical or 
nature-study lesson ! Then in all matters of products, of buildings, of the 
arts, of commerce, and of the organisation of social relations, the towns 
have an advantage over the country. 

14 — -2 



212 GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

the progressiveness of the instruction given, viz. the extension 
of the knowledge beyond the parish to the county. In the 
parish the whole world is to be seen in miniature, and our 
future work is simply the work of expansion. At the county 
stage the teacher is still, as in the previous stage, independent 
of prepared maps. With coloured chalks and a black-board, 
he sketches the county round the parish, and outlines the 
country round the county. He gradually puts in the physical 
features, and then in the course of a few weeks, bit by bit, 
introduces leading industries in connexion with a few towns, 
etc. 

You may now, or indeed before this, hang up a good map 
of the parish ; and I need scarcely say that this should be a 
large Ordnance map coloured by the hand ; and, after an 
interval, a county map may be exhibited. 

The next stage is not to enter into further detail with 
respect to the native county, as is too commonly done. If you 
will consider the preliminaries of method — the "What" and 
" Why " of school -geography — you will come to the conclusion 
that the next step, after a fair knowledge has been obtained 
of the physical geography and the leading industries and towns 
of the native county, is to introduce a large globe. Paint 
the native country red, and then, in this relation, let the whole 
round world burst upon the pupil's view. Globes should be 
at least 3 feet in diameter ; the maker of them should care less 
about absolute accuracy of detail than about effect. The 
physical features should be here again strongly marked, as in 
the maps you have been drawing on the black-board. I should 
have nothing strongly circumscribed by outline save the great 
divisions — Europe, Asia, etc. The teaching, with constant 
reference back to the fundamental conception of the parish for 
illustrations and explanations, should consist of the constantly 
repeated contemplation of this globe, and making acquaintance 
with the great divisions, and half-a-dozen great mountain 
chains, oceans, and rivers. The names on the globe should 



GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 213 

not exceed a couple of dozen. Climatic zones should be, of 
course, clearly indicated on the globe with a view to future 
teaching. 

The pupils at the next stage should have presented to them 
a strongly accentuated map of the whole world on a large scale, 
with the globe constantly there in view of the class — never, 
indeed, to be parted with throughout the whole school course. 
This map should be physical, strong, and even rough — only 
the important mountain ranges and rivers being indicated, and 
should have the countries, as well as the large divisions, outlined 
off. The study of this map with the help of such assistance as 
the geographical apparatus of the school provides, should be 
a daily occupation. The pupils should have outline maps 
given to them, to be filled up in imitation of the large map 
before them. I should keep them at this for a whole year, 
merely introducing a slightly more detailed knowledge of their 
own country after the first two or three months of exclusive 
world-contemplation. If there be such a thing as a raised map 
of the world, it should be hung up. If it is on a smaller scale 
than the big wall-map, this would not matter, as it is time now 
that children's imaginations should be called on to understand 
greater and lesser scales. In fact, their own filling up of 
outline maps has already taught them this. 

At every stage, even up to sixteen or seventeen years of 
age, the globe and the big map of the world should be always 
there for reference and revisal. 

The next stage is a still further extended knowledge of the 
native country, but always concurrent with an extended know~ 
ledge of the world as a whole, and especially of the British 
Empire. 

The more advanced school stage is to return to the globe, 
and explain more fully the climatic zones, and so introduce the 
pupil to Astronomical Geography. 

After this, you may do what you please, provided you 



214 GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

follow the principles that have guided your earlier teaching — 
the real by means of the real; seeking the aid of vivid diagrams 
and illustrations, and lantern-slides, but not confusing the 
children with too many of these. They are getting older, and 
you can now safely draw on their growing power of constructive 
imagination. As they advance, the teacher himself will be 
guided by large and descriptive books on geography, such as 
those recently issued by Messrs Stanford and other publishers ; 
and, to steady and rationalise his instruction, he should have 
before him some such book as Geikie's Lessons on Physical 
Geography, The filling up of the outline maps should be a 
weekly exercise at every stage of instruction, and all past work 
should be frequently revised. 

Now, in doing all this, as thus briefly summarised, you are 
simply extending the Infant-school work, and following the 
rules of sound method, as these have been applied to that 
initiatory stage of progress. The first lesson contains the last 
lesson, just as the parish is the miniature of the world. It is 
thus that you slowly rear in the pupil's mind a conception of 
the world, and all the lessons, historical and economic and 
moral, which a true comprehension of it has in store for him. 

All other ordinary rules of method are applicable in the 
course of your teaching; but they are not more significant 
or essential in the case of geography than of any other subject. 
There is one rule, however, which is an exception to this 
general statement, and I have reserved the introduction of 
it to the last, because of its great importance, and the 
constant breach of it by almost all teachers, especially in 
the two subjects of Geography and History. 

9. That rule is — "In. all subjects of instruction, when there 
is a mass of particulars, teach first the leading particulars only, 
and ignore all else until these are firmly rooted in the mind." 
I have found teachers exhausting every hamlet and bridge and 
road in their county with boys and girls, whose school period 



GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 21 5 

was necessarily brief, while leaving them in almost total igno- 
rance of their own country, and in quite total ignorance 
of every other, and even of the elementary fact that the world 
is a globe. This is giving an extreme instance ; but you find 
a similar thing being done, substantially, in every school you 
choose to visit. You find, in some, minute details regarding 
Scotland or England, or, it may be, France or Italy, to the 
necessary exclusion (necessary, for there is not time for every- 
thing) of the rest of the world. Now, if what we are teaching 
is geography, and if geography in its school sense be what I 
said it was, and if our reasons for teaching it be what I said 
they were, all this kind of procedure is utterly wrong — a 
waste and misuse of power and time. It, moreover, deprives 
geography of the attractions which it naturally has. You will 
at once deduce for yourselves from this rule of method 
a condemnation of the usual atlases and wall-maps, covered 
with names of places which nobody wants to know. Every 
map should contain only the names necessary to know, and 
nothing else. Map-makers confound two very different things — 
teaching-atlases and consultation-atlases ; but in this they only 
follow the example of the overcrowded geographical text-books 
for schools. 

As a subsidiary of sound method in teaching geography, 
I may, in passing, refer to the mental stimulus which can be 
given by a skilful use of etymology. To illustrate this one 
subordinate aspect of geographical teaching, so as to exhibit 
the history, the poetry, and sometimes the humour that there 
is in names, might engage us profitably for hours. 

But if the individual words yield us much to stimulate the 
minds of the young, and to startle even the dullest wits into 
thinking, how much more may be drawn for purposes of illus- 
tration and of genuine culture from our poets. " Geography 
in Literature " would make an admirable subject for a lecture. 
When pointing out to a class Stirling and the winding Forth, — 



2l6 GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

our Scottish Maeander, — we may quote with effect Wordsworth's 
lines — 

" From Stirling Castle we had seen 
The mazy Forth unravelled." 

And not far off we may see, through the eyes of Scott, 
where 

' ' On the north, through middle air, 
Ben-An heaves high his forehead bare." 

Or, turning our face in the other direction, we may ask 
our pupils to behold with us how— 

"On Ochil mountains fell the rays, 
And as each heathy top they kiss'd 
It gleamed a purple amethyst. 
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw ; 
Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law ; 

And, broad between them roll'd, 
The gallant Firth the eye might note, 
Whose islands on its bosom float, 

Like emeralds chased in gold." 

And as we carry the pointer south to the Border, so rich 
in the song of localities, we shall surely stir some human 
interest as we repeat — 

"'Oh green,' said I, 'are Yarrow's holms, 
And sweet is Yarrow flowing ; ' " 

and look with the poet's eye on the " chiming Tweed " and 
"pleasant Teviotdale," on "lone Saint Mary's silent lake," and 

"The shattered front of Newark's towers, 
Renowned in Border story." 

Passing into the west of England, we recall Milton's 
"shaggy top of Mona high"; southward the "sweet, tranquil 
Thames " of Arnold, and a multitude of poetic descriptions 
and felicitous epithets applied to our country, such as, " This 
precious stone set in a silver sea." When we leave our own 
country, our poets still accompany us. Byron illumines 
Greece, and when we touch on the Gulf of Venice we may 
recall the lines of Arnold — 






GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 21? 

"Far, far from here the Adriatic breaks 
In a warm bay among the green Illyrian hills." 

And can we point to Mont Blanc without thinking of the 
" sovran Blanc ? " 

" . . . Thou, most awful form, 
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines 
How silently ! " 

But to pursue this aspect of our theme would be an endless 
task. 

Finally, let me say to the teacher : — 

Your aim on the intellectual side, whatever the subject 
of instruction, ought not to be knowledge, but knowledge in 
its practical relations to ordinary life, just as your aim on the 
moral and religious side ought not to be moral and religious 
truths, but moral and religious life and action. This is the 
reverse of the usual order, but depend on it, it is only by 
keeping this practical aim in view that the teacher can be an 
educator. Turn to use. 

I would now, in concluding, ask leave to make a remark 
or two on method in general, in its relation to philosophy of 
mind, and I cannot do so better than by simply taking the rule 
I have last laid down. When you open your eyes, and look 
for the first time at an object — say a tree — you may be said to 
feel in a vague brutish way every part of it, but you perceive, in 
a definite rational way, only the more prominent or salient 
features. If you wish to know the object thoroughly, you 
proceed to take up detail after detail in succession ; and, with 
every detail so perceived, you increase your knowledge of the 
object. This is the process by which mind knows things of 
sense. Now if this be the process or way of mind in knowing 
or learning anything, it is also, necessarily, the proper and only 
proper process, way, or method of teaching it. Hence, deduced 
a priori from a psychological fact, comes the rule of method 



2l8 GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL 

which I have given above (9). You see the closeness, the 
necessity of the connexion. 

But this is true of all rules of method : they all, if sound, 
flow necessarily from the facts of the mind-process. The 
study of the philosophy of Education is the study of these 
connexions : surely a most interesting, instructive, elevating 
study for the professional educator. 

And not only so ; for as I have more than once said, the 
various rules of method, if sound, all play into each other's 
hands. Each helps the other : many of them necessarily 
involve others. 

You will thus see that it may be possible to reduce the 
Science and Methodology of Education to a very simple 
scheme — that is to say, if you once get at sound fundamental 
philosophical principles ; for the truer an exposition of mind 
or nature is, the simpler it will be. 

Doubtless, method-rules may be learned by heart ; and the 
way of putting them in practice, if cleverly exhibited by a man 
apt to teach, may be copied by the young teacher with good 
effect. But imitation and learning by rote are non-intelligent 
processes : they are not to be commended as the preparation 
for a profession. Is a so-called profession a profession at all, 
and not rather an empirical trade, which fails to comprehend 
its work in its deepest and rational relations ? I think it is 
not. The only questions which really interest me in Education 
are, such a settlement of the end of all our educating as 
may give to the teacher a daily conscious purpose; and such a 
philosophy of the tnethod of attaining that end, as will reduce 
all rules to a unity — not a dead unity, but a living unity — and 
so keep him in close daily contact with the philosophy of mind 
as a growing organism. 



219 



XI. 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 1 . 

In religious instruction and training there can be no such 
peculiarity as to exempt them from the principles that govern 
method in education generally. In speaking of this subject I 
shall not, however, trouble you either with psychology or with 
method in the pedantic sense. 

And yet Method there must be in all teaching ; above all 
in religion, where the aim is to convey to the growing mind 
skilfully and effectively what you know and believe and feel 
with a view to evoke the spiritual life that animates yourself. 
"Soul," says Carlyle, "is kindled only by soul:" that is certain. 
But there is a method or way which must be observed, if there 
is to be kindling. A man who has not a method or ' way ' in 
educating the young to religious conceptions and the religious 
life is to be likened to a man who should undertake to pilot a 
vessel to the mythical Islands of the Blessed, knowing only this 
the islands existed somewhere in the far west, but being 
unfurnished with a chart of the ocean to be traversed, and 
ignorant of navigation. He steers on the impulse of the 
moment. Such a man might have all the personal qualifications 
for his post, but he has none of the professional preparation and 
fitness. He would stand in need of a chart, and of instruction 
in the method or way of finding his true course. By some 
happy inspiration he might be going straight for his haven in 

1 Delivered, by request, to the Edinburgh Sabbath School Teachers' 
Association, 1886. 



220 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

the morning, and again undoing all his work in the evening by 
retracing his course over the pathless ocean, and perhaps 
finding himself further from his destination than when he 
started. So with the teacher. His impulse in teaching may 
keep him all right, for example, during the first part of a lesson, 
and in the second part he may undo everything — nay, like the 
mariner in search of the Islands of the Blessed, he may more 
than undo his work ; he may be further off than ever from his 
goal. 

The goal of the teacher is the religious result in the mind 
of the pupil ; and this result is life, not knowledge. Without 
this religious result — the true spiritual gain for the pupil — the 
facts of doctrine, which may be acquired after a rote fashion, 
are of little value. 

The most difficult and delicate of all subjects of instruction 
is religion, if what we aim at is the spiritual life of faith, hope, 
and love sustained by ethical ideals which have their beginning 
and end in God. A man who can give a really good religious 
lesson can give a successful lesson on any subject which he 
knows. And this, because the subtleties and delicacies of 
spiritual life demand more subtle and delicate handling than 
any ordinary school subject. As trainers in religion, we are 
dealing with the sentiments and emotions of childhood, and 
the smallest untoward incident may rouse in our pupils 
sentiments and emotions the very opposite of those we desire 
to call into activity. 

It is childhood we are dealing with, I say. The autumn 
harvest depends on the work done in the spring-time. 

i. The desire to teach. First, the religious instructor — be he 
a volunteer teacher or a parent — must have the desire to teach. 
The teacher who takes up Sunday-school work simply because 
it is the " right thing to do " will fail. He must have in him, 
I say, a desire to teach, a longing to teach, the truth as it is in 
himself. He has found a guide for his own life, and his 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 221 

affection for young and unformed minds constrains him to 
impart to them the spiritual treasure he has found. A mere 
sense of duty in teaching is not enough. The sense of duty 
vindicates the primary impulse, so to speak, and comes into 
requisition as a motive-power in those periods of dejection and 
of hopelessness which attend all work of a moral or spiritual 
kind. In religious teaching, above all other teaching, the 
consciousness of an inner law commanding you to teach is a 
mere accessory to the spiritual impulse of love which impels 
you to teach. 

2. Belief in the children you teach. Next to the first and 
prime qualification of a desire to teach is belief in the children 
whom you teach. If you do not believe that they have an 
innate capacity for spiritual truth, your teaching will certainly 
not reach their minds and hearts. It is their soul's need that 
you are supplying. You must presume that they are, in 
however rudimentary a way, crying out in the depths of their 
nature for a knowledge of God and divine things. They are 
truly children of God, not of the devil. They do not stand in 
antagonism to their spiritual Father ; they desire to be friends 
with Him, to give Him their love, and to receive His. If you 
do not teach in this conviction, your instruction can take the 
form of external precept only ; it cannot reach the inner springs 
of the human spirit. All the words of all the catechisms 
cannot create God in the heart of the child : they can, at best, 
only evoke Him. It is not you that sow the seed : the seed 
was sown at the moment the child was born — sown both in the 
heart and reason of the child. Your task is simply the careful 
nurturing into life and flower and fruit of the seed already there. 
Your fostering hand supplies appropriate soil and gives the 
warmth and tendance necessary for growth : that is all. Christ 
Himself has said : "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
When He said it, He meant it. Happy the teacher who could 
say, after he has left behind him the turbulence of boyhood, 
the egoism of youth, the struggles of mature life, " I am as one 



222 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

of these." It is to protect these children from being even such 
as you know that you yourself have been, that you seek to 
instruct and to guide them. Believe in their simple instinct 
for the elements of spiritual ideas. 

3. Restriction of the teaching. Do not teach all you know 
and feel. The temptation to do this is great — greatest where 
there is zeal. It is a mistake to yield to it. You have to 
teach only what meets the children's present need, their present 
case. Confine your instructions, then, to what is essential — 
to what is germinal ; that is to say, to those truths and 
sentiments which have in themselves an inherent power of 
expansion and growth through their encounter with the teach- 
ings of life — those truths which will stand the wear and tear 
of every day, which shine the more the more they are shaken 
by the shocks of destiny, and which come out vindicated by 
stern experience. 

4. Give milk to Babes. In selecting from what you know, 
select not only what is essential, but also what is easy and 
comprehensible. You cannot, if you would, antedate spiritual 
growth. God has set down an order in the manifestation of 
Himself to our souls. The attempt to anticipate growth 
produces in the child a feeling of intellectual and moral 
anxiety, and even perplexity, which become so associated with 
religion that children reject the whole because of its seeming 
intricacy. This feeling of difficulty and complexity hangs 
about the whole subject throughout boyhood and youth, and, 
in the case of even the well-disposed, one of the results is a 
merely formal, hard, and unintelligent belief as opposed to a 
living faith. Christianity is a very simple matter. If it were 
not so, it could not be the world-religion. Give, then, milk 
to babes, for this is all they can assimilate. We are not 
nourished by what we eat or drink, but by what we digest. 
To begin religious instruction with catechisms is a great — 
nay, an irretrievable blunder. Hooker says, "With religion 
it fareth as with other sciences ; the first delivery of the 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 223 

elements thereof must be formed according to the weak and 
slender capacities of young children." To religion above all 
subjects the injunction of Watts must be obeyed, " In learning 
anything there should be as little as possible proposed to the 
mind at once : and, that being understood, proceed then to 
the next adjoining part." Lessons should be short, easy and 
pleasant. No punishments, no place-taking, no prizes are 
permissible. 

5. Prepare your teaching. It is impossible to carry out 
the preceding advice as to selection and as to simplicity, if you 
do not prepare the lessons you mean to teach. Every Sunday- 
school teacher should study his lessons in some such book 
as the Cambridge Bible for Schools, and should carefully 
make up his mind as to what he means not to say, as well as 
to what he means to say. If you do not prepare, you may 
spoil the whole effect of an otherwise good lesson by intro- 
ducing matter either too difficult, or alien to the subject in 
hand, or by in some way confusing the lesson and destroying 
its unity. You thus deprive it of clearness, directness and 
efficacy. If you are really fit to be a teacher, the preparation 
for each day's work will be easy ; for if you are yourself living 
the Christian life, your experience will readily suggest to you 
the true import and significance of the lesson in hand. 
Besides, it is not the deeper spiritual lessons that may be 
drawn from your subject that you ought to convey to the 
young mind, but only those that lie on the surface and are of 
obvious application. 

6. Determine the substance of your instruction. I am 
dealing with Method, not with dogma ; but, as there can be 
no religion without dogma of some sort, I must illustrate 
Method by emphasizing the dogmas specially to be taught to 
the child. Certain characteristics of the substance of in- 
struction have been already indicated. We must teach the 
essential and the comprehensible. Let us, then, make up 
our minds as to these. I should say that the prime and 



224 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

primary object of a teacher of religion should be to bring into 
living activity in the consciousness of each child what may be 
called the sense of God. We wish him to feel God within 
him and about him. Next, we wish him to feel this God to 
be Father and Fountain of his spirit. We must then beware 
of representing Him as the prototype of the stern traditionary 
father of the Scottish race. This is what the historian of 
religions would call a tribal conception of God. We fathers 
of to-day are not now such barbarians as many of our well- 
meaning and pious, but ill-conditioned and mistaken, grand- 
fathers were. We have attained to a purer and higher 
conception of fatherhood. This child is the child of God, 
and God is his Father, in the modern Christian sense of that 
sacred word ; nay, better even than an earthly father, for He 
is much more ready to forgive. The face of the Almighty 
Father is a benign face, and if His child errs, the change on 
that face is a passing shadow only, not a judicial frown. 
If His justice is infinite, so also is His mercy. It is this which 
"endureth for ever." Penitence and the earnest desire after 
new obedience restore the clouded fatherhood in all its native 
benignity, for He does not desire the death of the sinner. 
His demands are really not exacting ; He does not drive His 
young flock over hard and stony paths, but leads them over 
the green pastures and by the quiet waters. See that this 
feeling and conception of God be evoked. Beware of 
blasphemy. 

Along with the feeling of God and of the fatherhood of 
God, we must evoke in the child's heart what naturally tends 
to arise in connexion with these teachings, viz. Reverence and 
Awe. These sentiments, when they are of the genuine and 
not the spurious kind, are compatible with love alone. Fear 
is not compatible with love. No man who ever lived feared 
God and loved Him at the same time, though, like a poor 
slave, he might call aloud that he did love Him in order to 
obviate possible penal consequences. " Fear," says Jean Paul, 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 225 

"is begotten of the devil." And, I may add, the worship of a 
God whom we fear is devil-worship. 

Next to the feeling of God and the sense of His benignant 
Fatherhood, penetrating like a warm light into the soul of the 
child, and the awe and reverence which accompany these 
spiritual ideas, I should like to make the child early feel in his 
inmost heart the elder-brotherhood of Christ. The man 
Christ Jesus walking here on earth, working and loving and 
suffering — coming here to lend a helping-hand to the weak 
and erring child and to the strong and sinful man, is the 
conception I should wish to present to the young Christian. 
Let him grasp this and understand once for all that, if he is in 
Christ, he is also in the Father. This elder brother is the 
revealer of God to him and as such his supreme Teacher ; He 
is the Way by which he is to walk, and, as such, the bridge 
between man and God ; He is the Master who is to be loyally 
served ; or, as the Scottish Catechism sums it up, He is 
Prophet, Priest, and King. 

Note this, that the personal Fatherhood of God tends to 
give place, as the child grows older, to that more universal 
conception of God as a Spirit infinite and incomprehensible, 
removed to a distance from man, which is expressed so well 
in the Scottish Catechism. It is just at this time that the 
elder brother Christ comes to the child as God in the concrete, 
God humanized, God-man, and restores the reality of the idea 
of God. The Son is there, and each, by being in Him, is in 
God the Father. 

Again, the immortality of the human spirit has to be 
assumed in all religious teaching — the fact that our striving 
life is a preparation and probation for a higher existence and 
that a blessed eternal life hereafter is for all who find eternal 
life here. 

' ' The low dark verge of life 
Is but the twilight of eternal day." 

These truths, I consider, are the essential substance of 



L. L. 



r 5 



226 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

Christian instruction. Whatever else may be added must be 
built on them as on a sure foundation. There is no difficulty 
in them : difficulties begin when men begin to speculate and 
refine and theologize. The child will accept these simple 
teachings readily, easily, gladly. Why should he not? 

And how all-important it is that he should accept them ! 
Leave human nature alone, and, spite of the divinity in it, the 
evil which is also there has a curious and appalling persistency 
and an ease of conquest which bewilder us. Give the ideas 
of the divine Fatherhood and of the elder-brotherhood and 
Sonship of Christ — thoughts so concrete as to be easily grasped 
by the young, so real as to seem like nature's food — and by 
the help of these the child, the boy, and the man will raise 
themselves to their true and sole humanity. That there should 
be a daemonic tendency in a nature which has yet, by its very 
constitution, a capacity for God, is part of the mystery of man. 
The physical world reveals many a parallel. Do we not see 
the flower rooted in the earth and earthy, and yet that same 
flower striving to take into its bosom the light of the sun as 
the primal source of life, growth and fruition, and truly living 
and growing only in so far as it absorbs the central light ? 

7. Preserve a due proportion in your teaching. If we are 
to limit our teaching to the essential in the first instance and 
to the milk of the Word, we are to take care when we advance 
to the teaching of other things less vital, to give our various 
teachings their due proportion in respect of importance. For 
example, if you believe that strict Sabbatarianism is an essential 
teaching, teach it ; but if it be only subordinate and accessory 
doctrine, if (as the greater part of Christendom holds) the 
keeping of the Sabbath is merely a means of grace, and if your 
own deliberate practice affirms this, beware of putting the duty 
of Christians in respect of such matters on a level with the 
truth essential to the Christian life. By so doing, you divert 
attention from what is vital. For the moment, the teaching 
may be accepted on your mere authority ; but as the pupils 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 227 

see your doctrine practically set aside by those who hold high 
and admitted positions as Christian men, the doubt which 
attaches to such subsidiary beliefs will assuredly tend to infect 
the essential truths. Rebellion against the whole Christian 
system will be, and we all know is, the inevitable result. 
Beware then of confounding the essential with that which, 
though desirable, is only subsidiary and instrumental. "By 
faith we are saved"; the faith, that is to say, not of intellectual 
assent, which by itself is simply husks, not grain, and increases 
the probabilities of spiritual death rather ; but the faith that is 
living and may be seen of all men in our judgments and deeds. 

When I say preserve a due proportion in your teaching, 
I merely say, in other words, give prominence to the essential. 
It is very important, for example, that children and grown 
people should go to church and take advantage of every means 
of edification ; but even this, important as it is, is not essential. 
True, with a certain class of people, there is no religious life at 
all, if there is no church attendance. In speaking thus I do 
not wish to give offence, but merely to emphasize the vital 
character of certain truths as compared with others. That is 
to say, teach only what in your heart of hearts you believe. 

8. Speak the truth. Take your daily conduct, that is 
to say, as the test of your belief. When a man takes your coat, 
you do not give him your cloak also ; when he smites you on 
one cheek, you do not turn the other. On the contrary, you 
either strike back, or hand the offender over to society which 
has got instructions from you and others to smite him back. 
The true significance of such passages is summed up in the 
general doctrine, " Forgive your enemies." If you do not 
teach such scriptural utterances with the necessary explanations 
and qualifications, you make a pretence of an ideal system of 
life which the child and boy find to break down in practice. 
You know it to be a pretence. When these utterances are 
taught absolutely, the sensitive young conscience finds Christi- 
anity unworkable, and the doubt, which thus attaches to these 

15—2 



228 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

doctrines, extends to the whole fabric of Christian truth and 
brings the whole down in ruins. I beg you to consider these 
things. Christ's yoke is easy and His burden light. We do 
not live under the Judaic Law. The Christian life is a simple 
matter to see into, though it may be difficult to exemplify in all 
we think and do. By putting difficulties in the way and 
exaggerating breaches in conduct, you do a wicked thing. 
It is the finer spirits that suffer most from the inner contra- 
dictions that result. These difficulties are stumbling-blocks, 
and check the natural flow of the spiritual life, sometimes 
causing its total extinction. It were better for you, teacher or 
parent, that you were cast into the sea with a millstone round 
your neck to sink you, than that you should thus choke the 
growing seed of the religious life in the young soul. This is a 
strong utterance, but it is not mine. (St Luke xv. 2 ; Mark ix. 
42.) Offences must come; but woe to you if they come by you. 
9. Preserve an order in your teaching. We must never 
forget the difficulty the young have in grasping the abstract or 
general. Take, for example, the question of regeneration or 
sanctification. We all feel the child's difficulty instinctively, 
for no one, I suppose, would think of asking a child of five to 
learn these theological definitions. If we would not ask a 
child of five, should we ask a child of seven or of nine or of 
eleven ? This, surely, is an important question ; for our object 
is to preserve religion from being mere formalism, and there is 
a formalism of words and dogma which much more surely 
retards the religious life than the formalism of ritual. "Training 
up children" is one of the leading characteristics of the Christian 
religion ; and it might give it a claim to acceptance if it had no 
other, that it addresses itself to the young, the ignorant, and 
the simple-minded, in accordance with the now recognized 
principles of sound educational method. For it makes use 
everywhere of the concrete. The whole essential truth is told 
through things and persons and acts. Christianity is a life and 
can be learned through human lives. It is a story, and as a 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 229 

story alone should it be first learned — not as dogma, save in 
respect to those essential truths of which I have spoken, if they 
may be called dogma. Educational method regards dogmas 
as tares that push up and choke the fine grain of God as it 
begins to grow in the heart of the child. There is no time to 
develope this aspect of the question, nor is there need : it is so 
manifest, though constantly forgotten. 

10. Reverence. If with all your teaching you fail to evoke 
reverence, you have failed altogether. Injunctions are here 
useless ; the children must be trained to do what is reverent, if 
they are to grow up reverent. Reverence, instinct with a 
certain awe, can be taught ; not by the bare statement of facts, 
but only by stirring the feelings and by giving reasons for acts of 
reverence and worship. Not only in children, but in men, this 
feeling or emotion is, probably, the most vital part of religion. 
It brings a great deal else in its train. Reverence and worship 
of an infinite God-Father humbles, and at the same time 
exalts, man to the highest of which he is capable ; and this 
elevated state of being cannot but influence character and 
conduct. When reverence is wanting, the child may know 
his catechism, yet remain irreligious. You may make an 
eminent Pharisee in this way, but not a living Christian. 
By presenting God as a Father, you call forth the finer 
emotions ; and by means of habitual prayer, you give that 
expression to the emotions you have evoked which makes 
them permanent. But the prayers should be simple, intel- 
ligible, and above all, in their manner, reverential. To this 
simple attitude of reverence and worship you can easily bring 
children, for it is a natural and needful expression of their 
inner life. This is what Christ meant when He said, " Unless 
ye become little children " &c. Simplicity and reverence are of 
the essence of the religious emotion ; and they are character- 
istic of childhood. 

I would now speak of certain auxiliaries in the teaching 



23O THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

of religion. These are Memory, Music, and the Style of 
examining. 

(i) Memory. All parts of the New Testament are not of 
equal value to children. But the passages which more directly 
appeal to them in the Gospels and Epistles (and these passages, 
so fit for children, are also precisely those which will most give 
strength in middle life and consolation in declining years) 
should be read, understood and committed to memory. The 
modern educationalist is apt to slight the learning of passages 
by heart. These words of truth and beauty should not be 
committed to memory once for all, and then set aside as done 
with ; they should be frequently reverted to in the course of 
instruction. Then, verses and hymns which simply and 
rhythmically present religious truth should be learned by 
heart. Such publications as " Hymns for Little Children," for 
example (if you omit what teaches sectarianism), are invaluable. 
So, also, many of the paraphrases and psalms, if taught to us 
when young, become a life-long possession. These memory- 
stores are, in truth, a kind of living presence in our souls 
watching over us. They furnish us with spiritual armour for 
the battle of life. They are a part of every militant Christian's 
weapons and equipment. These passages of Scripture it is far 
more important to lodge in the memory than the precise words 
of catechisms. 

Understand that I would not exclude catechetical dogma — 
the form of sound words when the fitting time for this comes. 
But I would never forget this, that the ability to define adoption 
and sanctification is a small thing compared with being adopted 
and sanctified. There is a prevalent superstition on this subject. 
The very words of catechisms must be given by children. Is 
it not a surer sign that the doctrine is intelligently apprehended 
if the substance and meaning are given in a boy's own words ? 

(2) Music. But if religion, in the rhythmical falls of 
hymns and psalms, be so helpful in building up the spiritual 
life of the young, what shall we say of verse set to fitting music 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 23 1 

and sung by children's voices in unison ? It is in popular 
music that that most effective aid of all educational method — 
viz., Sympathy, is evoked. I have said elsewhere, "The united 
utterance of a common resolution, of a heroic sentiment, of the 
love of truth, or of a common feeling of worship, gratitude or 
purity, in song suited to the capacities of children's minds and 
to the powers of children's voices, devotes the young hearts 
which pour forth the melody to the cause of humanity, morality 
and religion. The mere utterance of the song is, in some 
sense, a public vow of self-devotion to the thought to which it 
gives expression. The harmony of the singers falls back on 
the ear and seems to enforce afresh, in accents pleasing and 
insinuating, not harsh and preceptive, the sentiment to which 
the music has been joined. The humanity and religion of 
song thus drop gently and without the parade of formal 
teaching into the deepest heart of the child, and in this form 
they are welcome." Music has a subtle influence in the school 
and is a commender of truth. Besides, does not the mere 
music itself, apart from the lesson which the song conveys, 
reveal the inner harmony of the spiritual life? Bishop Beveridge 
says, " I find my soul is become more harmonious by being 
accustomed so much to harmony, and adverse to all manner of 
discord, so that the least jarring sounds, either in notes or 
words, seem very harsh and unpleasant to me." "The meaning 
of song," says Carlyle, "goes deep. Who is there that can 
express, in logical words, the effect music has on us ? A kind 
of inarticulate, unfathomable speech which leads us to the 
edge of the Infinite and lets us for moments gaze into 
that." 

(3) The Style of Examining. Still keeping to the subject 
of the auxiliaries of method, I would point out that the 
method of intercourse, between pupils and teacher, should 
be always conversational, not preceptive and as from a height. 
The children should read to the master, and the master should 
read to the children. In religion, at least, if in no other subject, 



232 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

the master may easily assume the attitude of a fellow-learner 
with his pupils, and lay aside the magisterial airs of superiority 
and infallibility. In no other way can religious instruction be 
truly religious. The magisterial and highly preceptive style 
cannot possibly be a fitting vehicle for that hope, love, and 
faith, which are the Christian graces, or for nourishing that 
sense of mystery, infinitude, and awe which evokes reverence. 

Need I say in this connection, that all place-taking, personal 
competition and prizes are wholly out of place — nay, they are 
destructive of true religious teaching. They vulgarise and 
secularise it. There should be no formal examinations and 
summing up of marks, although there ought to be frequent 
conversational and informal revisions of the lessons of the 
month or quarter. To make use of religion as an intellectual 
exercise is on a par with using the account of the Crucifixion 
for spelling or grammar 1 . In religious teaching again, punish- 
ments of whatever kind are ridiculous. Severity of discipline 
was consistent with being under the Law, and was good enough 
for Jews ; but it is out of place in the Christian scheme, which 
abjures Pharisees, formalists, and pedants. 

ii. Attend to manner in teaching. It is through the eyes, 
through the observation of the bearing of the teacher that 
children receive the strongest impressions. If the manner of 
the teacher is not in perfect harmony with the spirit of the 
religion he is teaching — with its gentleness, charity, humanity, 
he will fail; if it is in marked discord with that spirit, his 
teaching will be positively hurtful. He is an unworthy vehicle 
of the evangel, an impure channel of the Spirit. Better, 
I think, that the child should grow up in ignorance than be 
so taught ; for, in that case, the avenues to his soul would still 
remain open, whereas, in the case I have imagined, they are 
probably closed for ever. The manner of the teacher may 
more than undo his oral lesson : it may destroy the present 
lesson and bar all future and possible lessons. Love cannot 
1 As has been often done. 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 233 

be taught in harsh accents ; humanity cannot be taught where 
there are bitter judgments ; devotion cannot be taught with the 
face of threatening and command. The manner must also be 
reverent and earnest ; for reverence cannot be taught where 
. the bearing of the teacher is irreverent : earnestness cannot be 
taught where the manner is frivolous. Temper must be under 
control and the tone must be kindly ; for self-control and mutual 
kindliness cannot be taught where there is impatience and a 
cross or peevish tone. Manner with the young is, indeed, so 
potent that it may defeat the matter of instruction and put it 
to rout. The evil characteristics of manner in the teacher are 
due largely to impatience for results, and this naturally leads 
me to my next remark. 

12. Have faith in your teaching. Select wisely what you 
mean to teach, adopt a sound method, assume the virtue of a 
fitting manner (even if you have it not), and your teaching 
cannot possibly fail to have good results. Be assured of this : 
nothing is lost in the spiritual, any more than in the material, 
world. It cannot possibly be lost. You may never yourself 
see the results, but the bread you have cast on the waters will 
ultimately return. Nay, more than the bread you cast ; for 
God takes it, and the miracle of the loaves is daily repeated. 
We often read of late conversions. I do not quite believe 
in them. They are, for the most part, simply the revival of 
the teachings of childhood — the grown man after many 
wanderings going back to his mother, the prodigal, after 
feeding on husks, returning to the rich abundance of his 
Father's table. 

Now if you have brought up a child in such a way that the 
feeling of dependence and the sentiments of reverence and 
love centre in the idea of God and the person of Christ, if he 
has been so accustomed to receive your teachings as the natural 
and needful food of his spiritual nature that they are to him 
truly good news — an evangel — and gladly made his own, what 
more do you want ? This, so far as we can see, would have 



234 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

satisfied Christ ; why, then, should bishop, priest, or presbyter 
seek for more ? Assuredly, if there be anything in educational 
method at all, this is all that is possible to the teacher. The 
school must restrict itself to broad and universal truths, and 
the sentiments which underlie them, if it is to accomplish 
anything for the spiritual life; and it may be that, owing to 
this necessity, the school is destined one day to teach the 
Church what things are "generally necessary to salvation." 

It would be ignorant and foolish to underrate the import- 
ance of bringing up the young to be sharers in a religious 
scheme of thought which embodies a system of life, and to be 
members of a Christian communion which professes it ; but 
these things are outside the religious life in so far as it is vital. 
These externalities it is always easy to enforce, and hence the 
temptation to dwell on them to the extinction of the spiritual 
life in the young altogether. They will come in due time as 
the external habit of the inner life, — that external form with 
which man naturally seeks to endue all his sentiments and 
social activities. 

Do not be discouraged by the apparent throwing off of 
religious feeling and principle, which is too often characteristic 
of boyhood and adolescence. It is for the most part due to 
the mere force of animal life in the youth — the dawning man- 
hood which, conscious of its powers, is egotistic and resists 
authority, law, and convention. But this is only for a time. 
God does not relax His hold of any one whom He has once 
put His hand upon. In the words of the well-known hymn, 

" Thou on my head in early youth didst smile, 
And, though rebellious and perverse meanwhile, 
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee, 
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me." 

But remember you have no right to expect such fruits early 
or late, unless your teaching has been apt in substance, sound 
in method, true in manner. " Train up a child in the way he 
should go," has, we all know, been often to the outward eye 



THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 235 

falsified ; but has it really and to the inner eye been a delusive 
utterance? I do not believe it. Depend upon it, the Spirit is 
still in that youth who has gone astray, and it will finally assert 
itself. If it does not, it is because your training of him has 
not been "in the way he should go." 



In conclusion, let me say, the teacher should never for 
a moment forget the practical issues of religious teaching. 
" Religion is use," is, I think, a saying of Swedenborg's. Never 
cease impressing on the young that Christianity is a life — that 
the substance of your teaching — purity, love, godliness — has 
significance only in action ; that the Christian graces do not 
even exist at all in us, except in so far as they are constantly 
being translated into an infinite series of daily and hourly 
detail. Even our way of looking at outer things is transfigured 
by religion, so rich is its practical outcome. "To the religious 
mind," says Jean Paul, " every being is a moving temple of the 
Infinite, everything purifies and suns itself in the light of God." 
Break down, then, with reiterated persistence, the wall between 
belief and life. Our highly respectable grocers, bakers, farmers, 
squires, lawyers, teachers, ministers, professors, and so forth, 
too often make the business of life and their religion run on 
parallel lines. The boy has to be taught that the labour by 
which he is to gain his living is itself the divinely-appointed 
channel for his true inner life to flow in. It is by that business 
he will be judged, whether it be selling bacon or teaching 
philosophy ; it is in and through his daily relations as hirer 
and hired, buyer and seller, that his chance is given him, and 
almost wholly in these. God will not accept even his Sundays 
or his charity subscription-book. The Hellenic idea, even in 
the exalted and humane mind of Plato, virtually restricted 
salvation to an academic aristocracy. The power of the 
Christian idea lies in this, that the occupations which to the 
Greek sages were banausian, if not degrading, are no longer 



236 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 

common or unclean. The way of earning a living not only 
may be, but is, the way of life. In the discharge of the 
lowliest functions, the path to the highest and best may be 
trodden. 

As teachers, keep these practical issues before you, and the 
world will shortly be a better world than now. " God's true 
Church, remember, is the temple of the universe," as Jean 
Paul well says. In that temple we must always be worshipping. 
The going within walls to worship is a mere incident of the 
Christian life : the worship must be always going on in the 
world of men and women and affairs. This is the true worship 
which stated services only symbolize. 

I need scarcely say that whatever may be the result of your 
instruction as regards others, the reward to yourself is sure. 
The old saying docendo discimus is in nothing so true as in 
moral and religious teaching. Thus it is that children educate 
their parents. The depth and significance of spiritual ideas, 
indeed, are fully known only when we try to hand them on to 
others. They are then, like Mercy, twice blessed. They bless 
him that gives and him that takes. 



237 



XII. 



EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 1 . 

We all know that this is the age of examinations. We are 
beset by them on every side, and every profession and the 
Public Service hedge themselves round with examinations, 
qualifying or competitive, — except, indeed, the profession of 
secondary schoolmaster. The members of this profession are 
not required to know anything about their work in so far as it 
is teaching or educating, for the sufficient reason that they, by 
the mere fact, I presume, of their being Masters of Arts, have 
served themselves heirs to all the arts, including those they do 
not know ; they alone, of all professional men, are heaven-born. 
All skilled occupations, no less than professions, have their 
principles and their technique. The secondary schoolmaster 
will not deny that the educator of the middle and upper 
classes also requires principles and technique; but he always 
has them, if not by Divine inspiration, then by apostolical 
succession. 

Now we certainly all — both examiners and examinees — 
detest examinations. The former have a decided conviction, 
that, after all is done, the resultant class-list is a very rough 

1 Delivered (by request) at the Moray House Training College, to 
Students and Teachers, 1887. 



238 EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 

affair ; and the latter, if not at the top, is apt to feel that his 
real capacity has not been gauged. And both may be right. 
Both sigh for the golden age when examinations we're not 
and the "march of intellect" had not begun. 

Examinations are the pricks of the modern boy's life ; but 
it is vain to kick against the pricks. The human animal has 
to adapt himself to this new environment, and he who fails to 
do so, must give way and let the fittest survive : there is no 
escape for any. Let us, then, see what of real justification 
they have as a piece of educational machinery, and, above all, 
their relation to emulation and competition in schools and 
universities. Is it possible to reduce the evil and save edu- 
cation ? 

There are three kinds of examinations to be considered : — 
(a) Teaching or Class examinations ; (b) Qualifying exami- 
nations; (c) Honours and Competition examinations. 

There is a good deal to be said for all these, but especially 
for the first and second. 

(a) Teaching or Class Examinations. — As regards the 
first (teaching or class examinations), it is certain that there 
can be no good teaching which is not a continual process of 
oral examination. We may talk at and to boys, but we shall talk 
in vain. The highest kind of teaching is simply an intelligent 
and free conversation between a ripe and unripe mind. This, 
more than anything else, truly educates the young intelligence 
in the best possible way. But, if done consciously and with a 
purpose, it is examination. This was what Socrates did,- — a 
great educator. But the qualities needed for this are rarely 
to be found. We cannot presume on their being found at all, 
and we have to condescend to instruction and examination in 
the ordinary vulgar sense, and to be thankful if we can get this 
fairly well done in our schools. 

Now let us consider. Instructing a boy in anything is 
guiding him and helping him to find out how it is done, and 



EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 239 

then exercising him in the doing of it. Generally, it will be 
said that the knowledge of the hozv is best gained by simply 
doing the thing in imitation of a model. But if we omit the 
analysis of the "how," we are pretty sure to produce parrots 
and imitators. Originality and mental elasticity find their best 
friends outside the walls of such a school. The intelligent use 
of the intelligence is never acquired, and conventionality of 
mind — the boasted "practical" mind of the Briton — is the 
result. If, again, we dwell too much on the "how," we 
certainly stimulate the intelligence, but the mental energy thus 
generated has a tendency to dissipate itself in aimless and 
spasmodic activities. It is only by getting a thing done again 
and again that we give solidity of faculty. As in intellectual, 
so in moral method : I cannot, for example, cultivate justice 
in a youth by talking to him, or getting him to talk, about 
justice, but by getting him to do just acts. Character, in the 
intellect and in the moral nature alike, is not determined by 
the potentialities in a man, but by his activities in doing. 

Hence, it is a wise course to make instruction consist 
mainly of oral exercises supplemented by written exercises, once 
the way of doing the thing has been shown ; but without waiting 
for the full understanding of the process. Every day's exami- 
nation is a testing of the power of doing, — of the art or faculty 
of reading, speaking, writing our own or other languages, or of 
demonstrating relations of magnitudes and numbers. Our 
weekly or monthly written examinations make larger demands 
on the faculties that are being developed. Examinations, then, 
are tests of how the pupil can, unaided, do the things he has 
been taught. Sometimes, it is true, questions must turn on the 
mere reproduction of knowledge conveyed ; but to the extent 
to which examinations call for reproduction instead of doing, 
they are (though a necessary, yet) a defective test of mental 
power, and therefore weak as a mental discipline. You are 
teaching the humble arts of reading, writing, and spelling; 
how else can you ascertain whether you are actually teaching 



240 EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 

them, except by calling on your pupils to read, to write, to 
spell? So with grammar, you call on them to parse a 
sentence ; with arithmetic, you call on them to work their way 
through numerical relations ; with Latin, you call on them to 
translate an unprepared passage, or to write a Latin compo- 
sition ; and so forth. All your instruction points to the doing 
of something as outcome, — hence examinations in order to see 
if your pupils can do the thing they have been taught. A good 
teacher aims at the training of faculty, not the giving of 
knowledge. Encyclopaedism in education is bad ; — encyclo- 
psedism of knowledge that is to say, but we are bound to 
aim at what may be called encyclopsedism of faculty. By 
examinations alone can we find not only in what respect the 
pupil has failed to learn, but also in what respect we (the 
teachers) have failed to train faculty in a specific direction. 
These should, therefore, be not daily but hourly, and con- 
ducted orally; but no week should pass without examination 
papers being also written, the pupil being then left entirely to 
his own resources. 

Let me now consider teaching examinations in relation to 
emulation and competition. In how far may the teacher 
legitimately make use of these moral motives in the necessary 
work of class examining and class testing ? I confine myself, in 
the first instance, to class or teaching examinations, because 
the true significance of the general question of emulation and 
competition is best seen in their bearing on the inner and 
ordinary work of a school. 

Emulation is a passion on which schoolmasters rely, more 
than on any other, to urge boys, who are already well disposed 
to work, to exert themselves to the utmost. Emulation, strictly 
defined, is, I imagine, a desire to be equal to the best ; and so 
understood it is not morally hurtful. As manifested in school, 
however, it is a desire and effort to be better than others, and 
consequently, has its root in that love of self-assertion, power, 



EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 24I 

and acquisition, which is native to the human breast. It is the 
school aspect of the struggle for existence. 

Even in this its school form of a desire to surpass the best, 
emulation may, under the influence of a good and watchful 
master, be restricted to a generous rivalry, and foster a high 
and vigorous moral spirit. But when it degenerates into mere 
competition, the setting of one against another, the evil passions 
of jealousy and envy must inevitably enter and work moral 
injury to all concerned — master and pupils alike. Moreover, 
emulation, in the degraded form of competition, incites boys 
and youths to overstrain their powers, and is consequently 
hurtful to the brain, and so to the general health of body. It 
may be assumed that exertion and all that incites boys and 
men to exert themselves, are good, and all that urges them to 
strain themselves is bad. I speak of course of the ordinary 
circumstances of life, and of habitual conduct, merely ; for 
there are critical occasions on which duty requires that we 
should overstrain ourselves, even at the risk of our lives, and, 
for that matter, of the lives of others also. 

You will ask, Is it impossible that two boys should compete 
against each other without becoming victims to the evil passions 
of envy and jealousy ? The answer is, No ; but it is so rare an 
event that we cannot calculate on it. The cases which are 
sometimes cited are, I believe, misinterpreted. Two boys are 
straining for a prize, one against the other, and are good friends 
not only during the strife, but after it is over and one has been 
beaten. The reason of this really is, that the friendship of the 
boys is so strong that it survives the unnatural test to which it 
has been subjected, or that the beaten one has all along been 
secretly content to be beaten for the sake of his friend, and 
has not really cared very earnestly for success. But such 
friendships are rare, — more rare than the simulation of them ; 
and as, in educational matters, we have only to do with the 
ordinary case, I am driven to the conclusion, that wherever 
there is strong personal competition, there exists also a hostile 

l. l. 16 



242 EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 

feeling which gives rise, or, at least, tends to give rise, to 
jealousy, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness ; and this 
because the gain to one is loss to another. As boys grow 
into young men these feelings are doubtless much moderated, 
and, in well-conditioned youths, if they exist at all, they exist 
only in so far as they belong to the ordinary rivalries of life. 
But the point for educationalists to consider is this, What is 
the effect of personal competition on the unformed and ill- 
regulated passions of childhood and boyhood? Does keen 
personal competition give rise or does it not, to petty feelings 
of a jealous and envious character, which lead to all sorts 
of efforts being made to gain advantages — sometimes unfair 
advantages — over others? I think it does most certainly. 
And if I am right, the moral evils must greatly outweigh the 
intellectual benefits. The results are, excessive self-appreciation, 
unjust depreciation and detraction of others, and the painfully 
immoral condition which these feelings engender, and that at a 
period of life when impressions made are deep and lasting, and 
when moral habits once formed are formed for life. The 
generosity, ingenuousness, candour, so often attributed to the 
boyish nature, but which I maintain do not at all exist except in 
circumstances favourable to their growth, are seriously interfered 
with. False life-aims also are set up before the boy, with the 
sanction of his elders : to beat others is the great object of his 
existence. All this now I call demoralisation. It is anti-social. 
Note that I grant exceptional cases, and I also admit that 
under exceptional masters all these melancholy results may be 
obviated. I speak of the general case only. I have spoken of 
false aims ; for is not the whole system due to an exaggeration 
of the importance of mere intellect, and of a kind of intellect 
too which is by no means that which the higher work of the 
world demands, but of memory— quickness, smartness, Seivo- 
T-qs, — the vulpine intelligence which knows where the geese 
lie? When the ethical idea of education has fully entered 
into the souls of schoolmasters, this deifying of the intellect 






EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 243 

will be abjured, as opposed to all the highest and best aims of 
education. But the result, some say, is good for the nation, 
because competition secures the best intellect for the service of 
society. But, in answer, may we not point to the small outcome 
of the mental force of school and College "duxes" in the work 
of the world? Their aim has frequently been not knowledge, not 
truth, but success ; and when this stimulus has been removed, 
their interest flags, and the world has accordingly to find the 
majority of its best workers in those who have escaped this kind 
of training. If school and College duxes retain their bodily 
health, they almost always, it is true, do well in the world ; but 
my impression is, that the cases are few in which they contribute 
much to the moral and intellectual advance of humanity. To 
the evil physical results of all this straining of the over-worked 
brain we must partially attribute the small result in after-life. 

Then as to the demoralising effects on masters. They 
inevitably come to regard their few competing boys as alone 
their school ; and consequently, those who fail to take a place 
in the front line and who from an early age have ceased to care, 
because it is vain to hope, for success, are neglected. The 
master's pleasure is naturally in those who more than respond 
to every demand made on them, and on whom his own 
reputation and the reputation of his school depend. There is 
thus fostered in schoolmasters a mistaken conception of duty, 
as well as a false educational ideal. Education by competition 
is, in short, not liberal education ; it is education for a mean 
end, and, by using Horace and Sophocles for instruments, you 
do not thereby make it liberal and moralise the end. 

We have been speaking of emulation, remember, when it 
takes the degenerate and vulgar form of competition. If 
emulation be a desire for excellence, even though accompanied 
with a desire to be alongside of the best, there is nothing save 
what is commendable in it. Excellence is too abstract a notion 
to constitute an aim for boys ; and, indeed, for most men. To 
equal the best in any line of activity, is to desire excellence in 

16 — 2 



244 EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 

the only form in which we can measure it, viz., what the best 
can do. It is in this concrete form that excellence is intelligible 
to us. It is in this sense that we may be rightly told to emulate 
Christ, — that is to say, to rise to the highest excellence of our 
humanity. Emulation, then, in the sense of a desire to be 
alongside the best, may be fostered, and the moral nature 
benefited by it ; the demoralisation begins when for this is 
substituted the desire to beat others and exalt self over others, — 
when, in short, for emulation, which is noble rivalry, is substi- 
tuted competition, which is ignoble antagonism. 

True, a matured man may legitimately desire to excel others 
in virtue, in knowledge, in good works, in service to the State ; 
but in the case of a mature, well-regulated mind, this takes the 
form simply of a striving after abstract excellence, not the vulgar 
form of a desire to eclipse his neighbours. The excellence of 
our neighbours is merely the external measure by which we 
measure the degree to which we have attained our own ideal. 
If it be anything else than this, it is the mere exaltation of our 
own ego, — it is spurious emulation from the moral point of view, 
and thus far immoral. But how can we expect pure emulation, 
in the moral sense of it, from mere boys ? 

An argument frequently urged in support of competition in 
schools is, that in life there is this competition and personal 
rivalry, and the sooner boys are taught to ' give and take ' in the 
struggle of life the better. I do not admit the necessity for 
competition among men. But supposing that competition in 
the sense of a desire to beat others and to exalt self over their 
prostrate bodies, is among grown men, though immoral, yet 
inevitable ; is not this rather an argument for excluding it from 
a sphere where it is not inevitable ? Because immorality must 
exist among men, therefore train boys to it ! This is a Spen- 
cerian conception : — Train up a boy, in short, in the way of 
immorality, that when he is old he may not depart from it. A 
singular argument truly, only needing to be stated to furnish its 
own refutation. 



EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 245 

A master's business, then, is to foster pure emulation, and 
to check all the spurious forms of it ; and to foster it in all his 
pupils, not simply in two or three, letting all feel that they have 
obtained his approbation when they have done their best, though 
that best be far short of what others can do. 

Now what practical conclusions do we draw from all this ? 
The following : — 

1. The work of a class should be well within the capacity 
of all in that class, so that each, by doing his best, may be held 
to have attained excellence as regards his moral striving, and, 
along with this, full recognition of his intellectual attainment, 
whatever that may be. 

2. Recognition, both moral and intellectual, is not for a few 
but for all. Like the offer of salvation, I repeat, it is for all, 
and each must feel that, if he do not accept the offer, he has 
himself alone to blame. 

3. Place-taking, therefore, and prizes should be abolished, 
and a certificate or card given to each, which should recognise 
his merits. The master will then feel that his grandest achieve- 
ment will be, not to have one clever dux to be entered for the 
Oxford or Cambridge " Derby " and advertised in the newspapers 
if successful ; but to have the whole class duxes. I do not mean 
to denounce place-taking altogether in the case of very young 
pupils, so long as it does not become an instrument for esti- 
mating merit. It keeps a class lively ; but the numerical results 
should tell on the position of each boy only to the extent of 
ten per cent, of the total marks obtainable in other ways. 

The introduction into such certificates as have been referred 
to, of a moral scale, is not to be commended, because of the 
impossibility of always measuring motive, and, consequently, the 
probability of doing irreparable harm by an unjust judgment. 
But it would be quite safe to say that a boy's general conduct 
had been "unsatisfactory," "satisfactory," and "very satisfac- 
tory," without using the moral epithets " good," or " very good," 
or " bad." There is some danger in the too free use of these 



246 EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 

terms. As to the intellectual progress, this can be measured by 
giving to each his due percentage. The theory here is that all, 
and not merely one, may have 100 per cent. This practically, 
of course, is impossible,; but all may play the game. The fixing 
of definite percentages, however, such as 90 and 91 per cent., 
is apt to restore competition and all its evils. The best plan is 
to give all above 75 per cent, a first-class, all from 50 to 75 a 
second-class, and all below this a third-class, no ticket at all 
being given when a boy falls below say 40 per cent. If a master 
can issue first-class certificates to twenty boys in a class of 
twenty, he has thus twenty duxes, and has attained the greatest 
triumph which it is possible for him as a teacher to attain, so far 
as mere instruction goes. 

In granting certificates (as indeed in all matters that concern 
our relation to boys), where there is a doubt, give the boys the 
benefit of it. You can only do good by so doing. 

It is true that such arrangements as I have indicated put a 
moral, as well as an intellectual, strain on the master. But he 
exists to endure this. His high position in the State cannot be 
discharged on easier terms. A teacher who accepts his whole 
educational responsibilities, is the most important social worker 
we have. He has no slight task to perform ; but if he performs 
it well, he ought to be a happy man, for to him, probably, it 
has been given to do more for humanity, in his day and gener- 
ation, than to any other, if we except those men who, by dint of 
surpassing genius, solve the problems or elevate the thought and 
life of the race. 

(b) Qualifying Examinations. — Passing from Class 
Examinations, I might take as an illustration of qualifying 
examinations, school " leaving-certificates ;" but I prefer to go 
at once to the universities, and take the leaving-certificate of 
these institutions, which we call by the traditionary names 
Bachelor or Master of Arts. A Diploma in Arts is merely 
a certificate that a young man has carried his education into. 






EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 247 

a higher sphere than the school,— the sphere of ideas, that is 
to say, of literature, of criticism, and science, that he has spent 
a certain number of years in contact with confessed masters 
in certain departments of thought, and has received in this way 
such an amount of discipline and of substantial knowledge as 
entitles him to be regarded as a cultured man, and qualifies 
him to prosecute study in any specific line. More than this it 
is not ; less than this it ought not to be. The M.A. pass of 
an university does not proclaim that the holder is an expert in 
anything; all it does is to guarantee the liberal education of 
a youth. It is the business of our university authorities to see 
that it does this. If they do not see to this, they fail in their 
duty to the State. 

Since the M.A. examination is a qualifying examination 
merely, competition is entirely out of place. All the successful 
candidates should be arranged in alphabetical order. And this 
should be done, for the very purpose, among others, of pre- 
venting overstraining, and ensuring that calm of mind which 
alone favours true educational growth at the critical period of 
life from eighteen to twenty-one. Mutual converse, collision 
of mind with mind, much use of the library under the guidance 
of professors who can point out the right books to read, and 
who present to the student the history of thought and its present 
position (each in his own department) — such are the true 
educational influences of an university. The leaving-certificate 
or diploma should simply testify that a man has undergone 
this process of education, — very largely a process of self- 
education under guidance. The examiners can ascertain this 
only by making sure that due attendance has been given, and 
that the students, as the outcome of the whole, have a power 
or " faculty " of doing certain things, — translating into and from 
a foreign tongue, solving questions in mathematics, logic or 
science, writing historical accounts and criticisms. The standard 
set up must always be a moderate standard ; but great care 
should be taken that it truly testifies to genuine knowledge and 



248 EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 

power within the limits fixed. If the standard were not 
a moderate one, it would defeat the true process of education, 
which is a calm and leisurely process. Time is an important 
factor. A youth entering the university, properly prepared by 
the secondary school, should have no difficulty in meeting all 
reasonable requirements in three years, if he proceeds " without 
haste," but also " without rest." The results of examination 
being arranged alphabetically, there is an absence of competition 
— there is not even rivalry. Why should there be ? That we 
find it necessary even to ask such a question reveals that we 
are already demoralised. 

I drew certain practical conclusions for the school. What, 
then, are our practical conclusions for the university, with a 
view to our giving effect to the proper mode of conducting 
qualifying examinations? These, and they are all for the 
examiners, are — 

1. The object of a pass or qualifying examination should 
be to ascertain how much a man knows of his subject, and not 
his ignorance of this or that : — therefore the paper should 
always contain at least one-third more questions than he is 
allowed to answer. 

2. The questions should always turn on the important 
parts of the subject, — those parts which involve principles or 
methods of working, — and avoid hole-and-corner details. Some 
papers seem to be drawn up for the mere purpose of plucking ; 
all pass papers should be drawn up for the purpose of passing 
the candidates if possible. An examiner on the English 
language, who should take Murray's Dictionary and extract 
unusual words in order to pose his candidates, would proclaim 
his own unfitness for his position. But absurdities as great as 
this are constantly committed, especially in geography and 
history and literature ; and, I believe also, in the sciences. 

3. Questions should not be put which a candidate may 
be unable to answer, and yet know the subject on which he is 
examined. 



EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 249 

4. Abundance of time should be given. The best in- 
tellect is not always the quickest. Indeed the original and 
productive mind is always a deliberate, and sometimes a slow, 
mind. 

5. The questions should be as much as possible such as 
test the pupil's mental power in specific relation to the subject 
of examination rather than his acquired knowledge. If the 
subject is Aristotle, questions might be so framed as to pluck 
Aristotle himself, and a Chinaman could do it. If the subject 
be the interpretation of Robert Browning, anybody could have 
plucked him on his own works. 

6. Finally, there should be taken into consideration the 
report of each professor under whom the candidate has studied, 
who should be required to say whether the candidate had 
received a pass-certificate in his class. 

In short, the educational and educative should be kept in 
view in examining no less than in teaching, for the examination 
always tends to govern the teaching. We need to study in 
these days the art of examining as subsidiary to the art of 
education. Let examiners study examining, and themselves 
be examined on the art of examining. 

Dr Fitch, in his excellent " Lectures on Teaching," has a 
very good chapter on the subject. He says truly, but with 
great naivete, that the chief evils of the examination system 
will be obviated if the teacher does not teach for the examina- 
tion specially, — if the previous questions of the examiners are 
not studied, and so forth ; in brief, if neither teachers nor 
learners allow the coming examination to dominate their work. 
Now all these advices are perfectly vain so long as a teacher's 
credit and a pupil's success in life depend on the result. You 
will not convince either the one or the other that, if they have 
to run a race to reach a certain goal, the shortest line between 
two points is not the straight one. No; the only cure is in 
the principles that regulate an examination, in the character of 
the examiner and his mode of discharging his duty. 



250 EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 

As to the examinatio?i of a school. My remarks hitherto 
have had in view not the suppression of examinations, but the 
possibility of so tempering and adjusting them that they will 
not govern the education given, but, on the contrary, be 
determined by the education, adapted to it, and, as essential 
to this result, exclude the element of competition. I have 
pointed out that the knowledge which a pupil has of a subject 
can be ascertained only by ascertaining what he can do in it — 
his faculty relatively to it. But there are educational results, 
and those often of a delicate and rare kind, which the mere 
rough testing of faculty must always leave out of account. It 
is too coarse a measure. How are these to be gauged by an 
examiner? In three ways: (1) By studying the instruction- 
plan, the organization and the aim of a school as an educational 
unity. (2) By hearing the master teach and estimating his 
method of procedure in its disciplinary, refining, and enriching 
influence on a boy's mind. (3) By the general impression 
which the boys make on him as active intelligences and 
moralized beings. 

These functions of an examiner are not to be restricted to 
secondary and university schools alone ; they apply equally to 
primary schools and cover at least one-half of the work of a 
Government Inspector. The other half is, of course, the 
testing of faculty. Imperial grants should be paid oil the 
basis of the first and higher half of the Inspector's duty, 
provided always that not more than a certain percentage of 
the pupils who had completed their attendances fail, when 
tested as to their faculty in this or that. All possibility of 
undue pressure on pupils or masters disappears the moment 
we give effect to educational ideas in the inspection of 
education. 

In granting leaving-certificates in Secondary schools regard 
should be had to the three higher tests given above ; for 
a leaving-certificate, properly understood, is not merely a 
certificate that a boy has fulfilled a prescribed test as to 



EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 25 I 

'faculties,' but it also guarantees that he has passed through 
an organized curriculum of instruction, has been taught ac- 
cording to sound methods, and has thereby obtained such an 
amount of discipline and training as fit him for the work of life 
or for the university. 

(c) Honours and Competition Examinations. — We 
have been speaking of class or teaching examinations and of 
pass or qualifying examinations ; what now shall we say of 
Honours examinations ? These should exist, I think, only for 
men who mean to be experts in a department, and devote 
their lives to it. They have, in fact, a professional character, 
just as the M.B., or B.D., or LL.B. has. After a certain 
amount of general and liberal study, a youth must be allowed 
to specialise with a view to his future life-work. But there 
need be no competition, when his competency comes to be 
tested : a standard has to be reached, and the notice-paper 
should give the results alphabetically. I doubt very much if 
there should be a second class in the honours or professional 
schools — certainly not more than two classes. The aspirants 
should pass simply ; or " with distinction." I am keeping in 
view the moral influence of pressure, haste and competition on 
true intellectual development. What is morally hurtful must 
also be intellectually hurtful. 

I have dealt with the various kinds of examinations and we 
see that they are not only justified, but may be so conducted 
as to lose their objectionable character. Examiners must study 
the art of examining, just as educationalists must study the art 
of education. 

There remains only one kind of examination to be con- 
sidered from the evils of which it now seems to be impossible 
to escape, viz. where there is money or a post to be got, — a 
limited number of rewards or places for an unlimited number 
of candidates : and here jealousy, envy, &c. have no place for 



252 EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 

obvious reasons. Scholarships, Fellowships, State appoint- 
ments, evidently necessitate competition in its most offensive 
forms. Unquestionably, within this hot and steamy atmosphere 
we are not in the atmosphere of liberal education at all ; that 
at least is certain. We are conquered by the Chinese idea. 
China is called the flowery land ; but where in it are the flower 
and fruit of true culture ? All that can be said on competitive 
examinations, by way of practical guidance, is that in com- 
petitions the same leading principle should guide the Examiner 
as in ' qualifying ' and ' honours ' examinations. His business 
is to devise such a paper in his subject as shall bring to the 
front the youth of native capacity, and not the youth dis- 
tinguished for his reproductive facility. It is a difficult thing 
to draw up such papers. So far as my observation goes, much 
more consideration and time should be given to the drafting of 
papers and the examination of answers than is commonly given. 
I cannot think that rapidity of working should ever be a factor 
in determining results in competition examinations — assuredly 
never in the highest kind of examinations such as those for 
Fellowships or Indian appointments. The quick and ready 
wit and the facile pen do not necessarily indicate great mental 
capacity, and it is the capable man we desire to select for 
honour and place. 

There is a further question, viz. the relative value of 
subjects in competitive examinations : an important question 
in itself, and also because it determines the lines on which the 
higher education of the country will run. It is enough to say 
here that the subjects which are held to be most truly educative 
in their character should also, as a general rule, be those which 
are employed for the discovery of the highest capacity for the 
public service ; but we must not omit practical considerations. 
A young man who can pass high in History and Economics is 
of more value in administrative life than if he could pass high 
in Greek. 



EXAMINATIONS, EMULATION, AND COMPETITION 253 

It has, I may say, frequently occurred to me that Civil 
Service appointments should not be dependent on a State- 
examination at all, but that the posts at the disposal of 
Government should be distributed among Honours men at 
the various universities. Variety of culture and character 
would thus be secured and a great stimulus given to the 
universities. The ' social ' qualification would thus also be best 
secured. One universal condition would be not only sound 
physical health but a fair proficiency in some open air game 
or manly exercise. 

I have made these remarks because of the constant, and 
sometimes irrational outcry against examinations. In some 
form or other they will be always with us, and what we have 
to do is to find out ways of so regulating them as to make 
them efficient for the discovery of real capacity. 



254 



XIII. 

HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL. 

Language and literature are not more closely connected 
with the humanistic in education than history is. And this for 
obvious reasons. It is the introduction of the young mind to 
the record of the past of the race to which he himself belongs, 
and whose traditions it will be his duty to pass on to the next 
generation. It would be to waste words to endeavour to shew 
how closely the study of this record is associated with moral 
training in the altruistic virtues, and with that kind of political 
instruction that best fits the rising generation for the discharge 
of their obligations as citizens in one commonwealth. It 
strengthens the sympathy of man with man and binds more 
closely the social bond. By the study of past greatness, 
moreover, we learn to strive to be worthy of our forefathers, 
and, by the understanding of the causes which have so often 
led mankind astray, we learn to understand better the questions 
that arise in our own time, and to act, during the brief period 
assigned to us on the stage of life, with circumspection, and 
under a sense of responsibility to those who are to succeed us. 
It is for these reasons that I might include history, whereby, as 
Montaigne says, "We converse with those great and heroic 
souls of former and better ages," under the head of Social 
Ethics. It is the instrument whereby we counteract indi- 
vidualism and make each feel that he is part of an organized 
whole, for which as well as in which he must live his life. 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 255 

To discuss here the importance of history in education 
would, accordingly, be superfluous. Opinions, however, may 
vary as to the age at which it ought to be studied, and the 
method of instruction which ought to be pursued. It has 
been too much the habit, I think, to speak of history as a school 
subject from the point of view of the adult and cultivated mind, 
and to forget that, if the young are to enter into the life of 
bygone generations, and to take a living interest in the past out 
of which they have grown, the teaching of history must be 
adapted to the age of our pupils. 1 The childhood of history 
is best for the child, the boyhood of history for the boy, the 
youthhood of history for the youth, and the manhood of history 
for the man. A similar misconception has existed with regard 
to most other subjects ; and hence the attempt to convey adult 
conceptions to young minds in almost every department of 
instruction : a mode of procedure which, so far from promoting 
the growth of knowledge, checks growth by destroying interest. 
And, as educators, we must admit that, if the result of our 
teaching be not to stimulate activity of mind, and to plant in 
the young an interest in the subjects taught that will outlast 
the school and influence the whole of life, we have failed. 

History is a very large and various study, and to deal with 
it as an educational instrument in all its bearings would occupy 
a volume. My sole interest, here and now, is in history for the 
young as a vehicle of moral training, and (to repeat the words 
I have used above) as a means of extending the sympathy of 
man with man and of strengthening the social bond, thereby 

1 As an illustration of this tendency I may quote from Professor Dewey, 
" Everything depends on history being treated from a social standpoint as 
manifesting the agencies which have influenced social development, and the 
typical institutions in which social life has expressed itself"; and again, 
"It is necessary that the child should be forming the habit of interpreting 
the special incidents that occur, and the particular situations that present 
themselves in terms of the whole social life." All this is true ; but to what 
age of pupil do these remarks apply ? 



256 HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

confirming the feeling of the political unity and continuity of 
the commonwealth. 

When we ask for a Method in teaching history, we are 
first under obligation to explain to ourselves what we mean by 
history ; that is to say History in the school. 

If history be the story of man's words and acts, the British 
Museum could not hold the history of a single day. By 
common consent the history of mankind is limited to an account 
of the words and deeds of men as members of a co-operating 
society of men, words spoken and deeds done in the interests 
of the progress of the community as a whole. The record of 
the past is full of many minor histories, e. g., art, science, 
education, all of which throw a side-light on history in its 
ordinary accepted sense ; but we must not allow our attention 
to be diverted by these contributions to the history of humanity, 
however in themselves important, from the specific meaning of 
history as having, for its chief subject-matter, man as a political 
being ; as political, law-abiding ; and as law-abiding, moral. 

(1) History is not antiquarianism. Antiquarianism has 
something almost childlike about in it, so far as it revels in the 
facts and little things of the past simply because of its interest 
in facts and things in and for themselves, without special regard 
to their wider relations. There are, fortunately, minds of this 
type, and it is a good thing for the historian that they exist. 

(2) History is the story of the long progress of political 
humanity in time. Consequently the mere dating of events 
and of the prominent actors round whom these events have 
chiefly gathered is essential. This, however, is to be called 
chronology, not history. 

(3) Since history is the long record of time, it must 
present events, and the acts of the men who specially in- 
fluenced them, in an accurate, sequent series. Now this is to 
be properly called historical 'annals.' Annals may consist of 
bald, colourless statements as in China, or they may be vivid 
and picturesque, and contain an attempt to portray the actors. 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 257 

So far from such picturesque annals being, because of their 
dramatic character, less accurate presentations than a bald 
record, they are in truth more accurate, because they are a 
fuller presentation of human life ; and human life is always 
dramatic. All depends on the objectivity of the mind of the 
writer. It is evident that annals well written are substantially 
narrations or stories, and furnish the raw material of all history. 
Mr Birrell would tell us that this itself is history, "To keep 
the past alive for us is the pious function of the historian. 
Our curiosity is endless ; his the task of gratifying it. We 
want to know what happened long ago. Performance of this 
task is only proximately possible, but none the less it must 
be attempted, for the demand is born afresh with every infant's 
cry. History is a pageant, not a philosophy." Carlyle, also, 
looks at history as a picture. And certainly, in so far as history 
rests on annals, it must be a moving picture, and include the 
domestic and social life and the personal relations of men 
and women. I say "women," because in the picturesque 
annals of the human race, women have played no insig- 
nificant part. There have been great female rulers, but 
it is not this I refer to. I speak of the silent, and because 
it is silent and always personal, the potent influence of 
women on the motives of men. So with literature : men are 
the poets, but women have been the living stimulators of 
poetry. 

(4) History, then (and I do not speak of the philosophy 
or so-called science of history, which, again, is a distinct 
subject), contains both antiquities, chronology and annals ; 
but, if we are to have history in the full sense, these elements 
must be so treated as to exhibit the causal relations of the 
series of events and their effect on the life of the community 
as a public ethical polity — a life of progress or of decay as it 
may be. To write history, accordingly, demands a combina- 
tion of the highest powers. By the very nature of the case, 
history must be the most instructive and attractive of all 
l. L. 17 



258 HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

studies, for what can transcend in importance the history of 
man to men? 

(5) The history of a nation, as distinguished from world- 
history, is the history of a particular race ; that is to say of a 
significant, if not specific, type of man working towards a 
social polity and a material and ethical civilization under 
certain conditions of physical environment 1 . The chief factor 
is, doubtless, the racial type ; but, inasmuch as man lives by 
the earth and its products, it follows that relations to environ- 
ment must be of vast importance in the history of a nation, 
and will be found to explain much of its political activity and 
industrial growth. The material and economic conditions can 
never indeed be lost sight of by a historian. In an advanced 
and complex civilization these material considerations may 
seem to have given place to " ideas " as determining the acts 
and ambitions of a people ; but they are always at work 
silently ; and, when they are urgent, ideas, whether moral, 
political, or religious, may be swept away before them. The 

J>rima vitae will ultimately push their claims to the front. 
Geography, then, in its large sense, as the best expression for 
environment, is indispensable to the understanding of history 2 . 

(6) All the same, at the back of the sequence of events 
and the human drama which we call annals has been Thought, 
i.e., ideas and purposes. These, again, have for the most part 
been closely connected with thinkers and with makers or trans- 
formers of politics ; although it is true that tendencies often 
exist and will move a whole people which cannot be traced 
to any one personality. Thus the series of events as deter- 
mined by external conditions, but above all by thoughts and 
ideals of social life, constitutes history a philosophy : that is 
to say, a reasoned account of the progress of civilization. 

1 It may be said that it is often a history of a political organization 
embracing many races. But when it is so, there is always a leading race 
which determines the polity and gives colour to the social life. 

2 See Lecture on Geography. 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 259 

If we reflect for a moment we shall see that the writer of 
the history even of a single nation in the large and rational 
sense, much more the historian of the world, ought to be 
possessed of an intense sympathy with humanity, the imagi- 
nation of a poet, the thoughtfulness of a philosopher, the 
knowledge of an encyclopaedist and the gifts of an orator. 
He has to deal with the largest generalizations, and, by dwelling 
on these, to lay bare the secret springs of events and motives, 
and all the causal relations of the growth or decay of nations. 
Hence, we may truly say, that a historical grasp of the life of 
man through the ages is the last and richest result of a man's 
culture. 

I have dwelt on the various elements that enter into 
history ' partly to shew that, even if you have had a boy 
under tuition up to the end of the secondary school period, 
it would be little that he could know of history : on the other 
hand, instruction which he receives may always be such as will 
prepare him for the ultimate comprehension of the subject 
in its widest significance. It is not history, then, but only 
certain of the elements that go to constitute history a subject 
of humane culture so far as boys are concerned. As in all 
other subjects, we can do nothing in the school period but lay 
foundations. What we have to attend to is this : — so to teach 
as to give a sound basis for ultimate knowledge in every 
department that we admit to the school curriculum ; but much 
more have we so to teach as to feel assured that we have 
already attained an educational purpose, at whatever stage the 
pupil may cease his attendance at school. What is that purpose 
generally ? 

Purpose. — We may sometimes be disposed to think that 
language is somewhat strained when it is said that the object 
we have in view, even in the formal discipline of intellect, is 
ethical. We see that it is so, however, as soon as we under- 
stand the meaning of the word " ethical " as marking the issue 

17 — 2 



260 HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

in personal life and conduct of the rational and emotional 
which so curiously and subtly blend to make a man. To 
say that the end is ethical is no more than to say that the 
end of man is the Humanity in him — not this or that specific 
knowledge or faculty. But, however the word may demand 
explanation or justify restriction, as denoting the end of 
disciplinary studies, its application to the teaching of school 
history " leaps to the eyes." 

We attain our ethical purpose in teaching history by con- 
necting the life of the boy with the life of the past humanity 
of which he is the most recent outcome. Thus we make it 
possible for him to become a " being of large discourse looking 
before and after " ; for the afterlook brings with it the forward 
look. We prolong his experience and his life thereby. Instead 
of threescore years and ten, he lives thousands of years. All 
the past of man's life pours into him, and he reaches forward 
also into the future of the race. 

The supreme purpose then which we have in view in teaching 
history in the school is, I hold, the enriching of the humanity 
of the pupil with a view to an ethical result in life and character. 
The quantity k?iown is of little importance. 

But no man, were he to give his whole life to history, 
could comprehend it, if he did not rest all his experience on 
a home basis. Without this, the true significance of events 
in world-history will not touch him ; their interpretation will 
lie outside his capacity ; his imagination, on which true appre- 
ciation of men and movements depends, will fail him. What 
has been is what now exists around him, and what has been 
and is, is what will be. Accordingly, his historical appreciation 
and historical imagination must rest on the comparatively 
narrow basis of his own national history. If this be so with 
the professed historian, how much more is it true of the average 
man. This gives us our second proposition : 

The history of the school must be national history, and its 
primary aim is the knowledge of the past of our own country as 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 261 

a portion of the human family, with a view to the evoking of 
that personal attachment to our past and prese?it and future 
which we call Patriotism. 

A true patriot, as distinguished from a jingo, is full of 
history, though it may be somewhat vague at times. The 
history of the past, and the probable history of the future, 
of his country animate him, although he may be a poor hand 
at a history examination paper. His whole life as a man is 
stimulated and broadened by something much greater than 
himself, and that something is the idea of nationality. This 
idea operates as a formative force in the education of the 
young. 

In educating the boy to nationality and patriotism we do 
not mean him to stop short at this ; but we may be assured 
that the vague and watered cosmopolitanism, which some 
affect, can be genuine only in so far as it rests on a patriotic 
national feeling. If we do not love those of our own house- 
hold the less we talk about loving Humanity with a big h the 
better. It is in respecting ourselves that we respect others. 
The youth of the country, then, must grow up in a knowledge 
of their own national record of arts and arms just as they 
must grow up in and through their own tongue and their 
own literature ; and this they must do, if they are intelligently 
and sympathetically to comprehend the life of other nations, 
past or contemporary. Education manifestly fails to attain 
its moral and civic ends if it does not connect a boy with 
his own national antecedents and all that has made him 
and the present possible, and it equally fails to attain 
the ends of culture in its larger sense. Patriotism must be 
intelligent ; 

" Love thou thy land with love far brought 
From out the storied past." 

But while this is our first aim, we must never lose sight 
of our final purpose — the enriching of the humanity of the 



262 HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

pupil with a view to an ethical result in him as a member of 
the human race. 

General Method. — Having defined our aim, how are we to 
proceed? Can we not find some general rule of method 
which shall govern all school history from infancy to the 
age of 1 8 — the age which marks the termination of secondary 
instruction? I think we can, if we consider the historical 
elements of which we have spoken and the form in which 
these first of all present themselves to us, viz., as annals. 
The general method is, I think, to claim the chronology and 
annalistic materials of history for the school up to 15 or 16. 

Now, as annals, under which I would include the bio- 
graphical, history is a series of related events in Time connected 
with certain communities of persons, particular localities, and 
distinguished men ; the even tenor of events being occasionally 
disturbed by outbursts of passion and emotion. That is to 
say, it presents itself to us as an epic made up of dramatic 
situations with interludes of lyrical raptures — all connected 
with persons and the aims or ideas which they represent. 
Or we might say, it is a prosaic epic every now and then 
passing into drama and accompanied by a lyrical chorus. 
History cannot be reasoned history to a boy ; even at the age 
of 16 or 17, it is only very partially so; but it can always 
be an epic, a drama and a song. The general principle of 
procedure is thus revealed. We must teach history to the 
young as an epic, a drama and a song. A certain number 
of dates connected with great crises of national history, or 
with great characters, must, of course, be known for the sake 
of the time-sequence, and certain prosaic facts must enter as 
connecting links of the epic, as the pupils increase in years. 
But the younger our pupils are the more must the epic, 
dramatic, and lyric idea of history be kept in view, and the 
more indifferent must we remain to causal explanations, and 
the more sparing must we be of dates. Thus, history in the 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 263 

school will be full of humanity, and so be a humane study ; 
thus will it connect itself with literature ; thus will it stir 
ethical emotion ; thus, in short, will it be history in the con- 
crete. And when history, in the larger philosophic conception 
of it, comes within the range of the cultured adolescent mind, 
this epic view of it will contribute to a true reasoned com- 
prehension — a comprehension, that is to say, which will take 
full account of human character, feeling, and motive. 

" History," says Montaigne, " is an idle study to those 
who choose to make it so ; but of inestimable value to those 
who can make use of it ; the only study, Plato says, the 
Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves * * * Above all let 
the tutor remember to what end his instruction is directed, 
and not so much imprint on his pupil's memory the date 
of the ruin of Carthage as the character of Hannibal and 
of Scipio ; nor so much where Marcellus died as why it was 
unworthy of the duty that he died there. Let him read 
history not as an amusing narrative but as a discipline of 
the judgment. * * * To some history is a mere language study, 
to others a perfect anatomy of philosophy by which the most 
secret and abstruse parts of our human natures are pene- 
trated." 

History, taught in accordance with this method, shews 
itself to be, above all other studies, a humane study, and to 
be rich in all those elements which go to the ethical culture 
of the young by exercising their moral judgment. All subjects, 
when properly taught, contribute, it is true, to this ethical 
culture, for even science can be humanized ; but language (in 
its larger significance as literature) and history contribute most 
of all ; and these two play into each other's hands. Together 
they constitute, along with morality and religion, the humanistic 
in education and furnish the best instruments for the ethical 
growth of mind. 

The general principle of procedure of which I have been 
speaking, naturally suggests the true method of instruction in 



264 HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

particular lessons. Let the period be the Scots' wars of 
independence. Round Wallace and Bruce and, at a later 
period, Charles I. this story chiefly gathers. The boy, with 
the map before him, must have conveyed to him a con- 
ception of the conditions physical, social, and political of each 
period, in so far as these are intelligible at the age which 
he has reached. The story should be then first of all told 
to him, and only thereafter read to him. He should finally 
read it himself. This is the epic : the dramatic and the lyrical 
enters by reading to him, or with him, all the national poetry 
and song that has gathered round the period. Dunbar and 
Barbour are put in requisition for the earlier periods. He 
then, as in every other subject, is invited to express himself in 
the construction of a narrative of the leading events. 

In the history of England, the periods of the French wars 
and the Spanish Armada, for example, are to be treated in like 
manner. The boy must strike his roots deep into the national 
soil, or he will never come to much. It matters nothing that 
the poetry you give contains much that is legendary. A national 
legend is far more significant in the inner history of a people 
than a bald fact. 

Such, I conceive, is the true method of school history in 
general. The minor details of method will be suggested by 
the Rules of Method applicable to all subjects; but a few 
words regarding three of these rules of detail may be added 
by way of illustration : — 

(1) We are met at the threshold by this principle, viz. new 
knowledge must rest on knowledge already acquired, if it is to 
be a living and intelligible growth. In other words, we must 
always begin from a child's own mind-centre, if we wish to 
extend his area of knowledge effectively. Consequently, if he 
is to learn intelligently about past men and events, he must 
have some knowledge of existing men and events. He must 
have seen and talked and read about things present to his own 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 265 

experience, before he can have the imaginative material at his 
service for comprehending the past and remote. This he 
gradually acquires from his every-day contact with people and 
things, the general course of instruction in the school, and 
from the reading of simple fables, stories, and narratives in his 
text-books and the school library, all aided by the introduction 
of newspapers into the school when important events are 
occurring. His arithmetic, meanwhile, is teaching him to 
stretch his conception of time, and his geography to localize 
his own and other countries and to become alive to the fact 
that he belongs to a distinct nationality. The only historical 
imaginative material which I would directly give before the age 
of ten complete is the learning by heart of national ballads, 
such as Chevy Chase, etc. 

(2) At ten complete I may begin history proper, and I am 
now confronted with the rule, "Turn everything to use." The 
" use " is determined by the end or purpose. I have already 
spoken of this, but I may say further : — 

Geography we teach with a view to extensiveness of mind ; 
arithmetic and geometry with a view to intensiveness of faculty ; 
history, not merely with a view to lengthening the brief span 
of man's life into the past, but as the basis of social ethics. 
Unless I stir a boy or girl through the emotions, I do not know 
how I am to get hold of them. We wish them, as they grow 
into youthhood, to be so taught that the national life and 
character in so far as it is worthy of admiration, and the 
achievements of their forefathers, shall form part of themselves, 
enter into their judgments on present affairs, and stimulate 
them to maintain and advance society by the memory of what 
has been done before they were born. It was as citizens of a 
particular nation and by a high sense of the duties of citizen- 
ship, that our ancestors accomplished all that has made the 
present desirable as an advance on their own time. Our object, 
then, is to lead the boy to consider himself as a continuation 
of the past, as the transmitter, during his lifetime of activity, of 



266 HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

a tradition of life and character. He will be taught to aim at 
making things better than he finds them. From precept and 
example he will learn to keep before him the highest ideal of 
the duties of a citizen, and recognize the need of deliberation, 
self-restraint, and self-sacrifice in the interest of the common- 
wealth : 

"Not clinging to some ancient saw; 
Not mastered by some modern term ; 
Not swift nor slow to change, but firm : 
And in its season bring the law." Tennyson. 

If this is not our aim, what is ? Why do I not give him 
the chronology and annals of Peru instead of England and 
Scotland? 

Up to the eleventh year, I would confine myself, I have 
said, to ballads and a few graphic stories of heroes. In the 
eleventh year the course of instruction may begin to be 
continuous. But history is always a story to be told, and the 
wandering minstrel of old is our model teacher. The childhood 
of history, I have said, is the history for children. Text-books 
are out of place. The tale has to be narrated by the teacher, 
just as the minstrels used to sing the deeds of heroes at the courts 
of feudal princes. The teacher's mind must be full of matter, 
and he must cultivate dramatic and graphic narration. Preserve 
the human interest of the narrative, and point the morals, as 
you go, without impressing them. Narrations should always be 
given in the presence of a map, and geographical references 
constantly made. Certain facts and dates should be put on 
the black-board and copies made by the pupils. Lantern-slides 
should be largely used. All the greatest crises and great men 
of British history, if dealt with in this fashion, from Alfred and 
Wallace, down to the Boer war, could be presented to the 
pupils by the time they are u years of age. 

From Twelfth to Fifteenth Year. — It is now chiefly that 
we begin emphasizing the time-sequence of events ; within a 
narrow period, of course, at first. Boys do not object to learn 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 267 

these by heart, if the events themselves have been first narrated. 
A chronological sheet, containing not more than 20 of the 
principal dates in British history, should be hung up and 
committed to memory. In teaching the time-sequence, the 
gathering of great incidents round kings and emperors has 
been strenuously objected to by some. I do not concur with 
these objectors. It is quite natural, it seems to me, to consider 
events in their relation to the chief magistrate of the country 
for the time being ; and it is an aid to memory. So, also, the 
record of wars and battles has been denounced as " drum and 
trumpet " history. But these interest both boys and men, and, 
moreover, illustrate the great transitions of national and world 
development. As Tennyson says, 

" For all the past of Time reveals 
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals 
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact." 

Thus is history made interesting ; and if it is not made 
interesting, it is of little use in the school. Moreover, it is of 
moral and intellectual value to a boy only in so far as it gathers 
round persons and dramatic situations which interest. Thereby 
it enriches his ethical nature and furnishes food for his imagi- 
nation. In the thirteenth year a text-book may be put into 
the pupil's hands for the first time; but it should be a historical 
reading book, not a history. Thus the early stage of historical 
teaching is revised, and the record brought down to our own times. 

I do not think that pupils should be questioned much in 
history, except with a view to the language of the text-book, 
when they have been introduced to one ; but, unquestionably 
no lesson is complete which does not include a conversation 
on the substance of what has been read. The ends of exami- 
nation in all narrative (except where new words demand 
explanation) are always best attained by a familiar interchange 
of opinion, and then by requiring the pupils to reproduce in 
their own words, first orally, and then on slate or paper, what 
they have read in their books or heard from their teacher. 



268 HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

The text-book, I say, should not be an epitome of history, 
but a historical reading book 1 . Epitomes are merely arid 
tables of contents ; we ask boys to " get them up," and are 
surprised that they should dislike the task ! Chronological 
connections will be furnished by the teacher orally, written on 
the black-board, and entered in the pupil's own note-book. 
Chronological charts (I have also indicated) should be hung 
up ; but these should avoid much detail. The best chart for 
my study is the worst possible for a school. In history, as in 
all school subjects, eye-memory is too much ignored. The poets 
will be largely utilized, and if not read by the boys, then read 
to them. Portraits of great men and pictures of great historical 
scenes or monuments will be shewn, lantern-slides being used. 
You may be sure of this that the young can be interested in 
history only in so far as it is (in the words of a French writer) 
"a living resurrection of the past." Human character, motive, 
passion, are the true attraction, and this is attained by (to use 
Carlyle's phrase) " giving a picture of the thing acted." 

The earlier stages of history-teaching are thus, as will be 
seen, annalistic, epic, pictorial, ethical — and only in the later 
period didactic. Oral instruction by the teacher is chiefly relied 
on. To say that there is no training in such teaching of history 
is absurd. That there is little discipline as compared with that 
given by formal studies is true. But training, though not 
discipline, is often something much better. 

From Fifteenth to Eighteenth Year. — During this period 
of ' secondary ' instruction, the pupil may begin his history over 
again, as a reasoned or rational history, in some such book as 
Green's Short History of England or Hume Brown's History 

1 It is superfluous in these days to say that history should always be 
taught in presence of maps, especially maps that emphasize physical 
characteristics, and that the master should sketch on the black-board the 
plans of battles with coloured chalks. Photographs and lantern-slides and 
casts should also be largely used. History apparatus is as necessary for a 
school as science apparatus. 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 269 

of Scotland. In the course of these years he will be much 
exercised in writing historical narratives. Every advantage 
will, meanwhile, continue to be taken of the general literature 
of the country, the master reading prose and poetical pieces 
to the pupils, constantly substituting such readings for the 
ordinary lesson. When speaking of the Wars of the Roses, 
he would stop and read Shakespeare's plays, one or more. 
In the dramas of Tennyson and Sir Henry Taylor, and, 
perhaps, also Browning and others, we find admirable aids to 
a vital reproduction of the past. Historical novels, if good, 
such as Sir Walter Scott's, should be in the school library 
and freely given out. In the last year of his course, the pupil 
should read along with the master (not as lessons in the 
technical sense) a book on the "making of England." The 
occasional acting also of great historical events by the pupils 
would do much to give life and meaning to the past. Books 
written on special periods, of 'which there are now many, and 
biographies such as those of Warwick, Wolsey, Clive, Nelson, 
Cromwell, should be in the school library, and the boys should 
be encouraged to read them ; but I beseech you, do not ask 
the boys to "get them up." Few will of themselves read, you 
say. I answer, this largely depends on how you have taught ; 
and also, I would say, it is only a few that ever go beyond the 
elements of any subject ; but these few are worth all the rest 
put together. Just as in Society ; it is a few men, and, I am 
not sure we may not say, above all, a few women, that maintain 
the standard of culture and social intercourse and make life 
worth living. 

It is in the secondary stage of education alone that history 
can be taught as a rational sequence ; also that the moral 
instruction suggested by almost every page can be directly 
and of set purpose enforced. At the earlier stages this moral 
teaching is very much taken for granted by the teacher — 
adverted to, but not prelected on. "It is the office of historical 



27O HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

science," says Lord Acton, "to maintain morality as the sole 
impartial criticism of men and things, and the only one on 
which honest minds can be made to agree." 

In classical schools the boys will of course obtain a fair 
knowledge of the histories of Greece and Rome. These 
histories should be short and full ; that is to say, full in their 
treatment of a few things, and always free from details not 
essential to the comprehending of the general course of the 
story of these nations and the character of the people. Such 
books as Smith's school histories are models of what a school 
history ought not to be. (Read Smith's England, page 29, for 
example, which page I have selected at random.) Is it not 
incredible that boys should leave (so-called) Classical schools 
ignorant of Plutarch's Lives ? 

Towards the end of the secondary period, historical reading, 
such as the selection edited by Mr Green, should be read, and 
literary and historical instruction in this way combined. It is 
only at the University stage that Gibbon, Mommsen, Ranke, 
Guizot, Milman, Motley, Merivale should be heard of. 

You will now, I hope, see that history contributes in a 
very direct way to the ethical purpose of the school, while 
contributing largely to the acquisition of English, to literary 
training generally, and to the peculiar "culture" which the study 
of the past gives. 

Before the boys leave school (at the age of 17-18) a course 
of familiar lectures should be given on the history of the world, 
with constant reference to a large wall map and a " Stream of 
Time." These conversational lectures will connect the civili- 
zation of the ancient with the modern world. Very general 
notions only will be conveyed, but the culture and the impulse 

1 I wonder how many youths who have taken ' ' History Honours at our 
Universities" have read any of these, not to speak of Prescott and Motley, 
&c. In every subject under the sun, the teacher tends to become petty and 
pedantic and to lose all perspective, pluming himself on his knowledge of 
petty points. 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 2J\ 

to know which are given by general notions are unquestionable. 
In fact, there is little of real value anywhere save general 
ideas. I have pointed out {Institutes of Education) that each 
stage of intellectual evolution has its own appropriate teaching, 
and that, as boys become adolescent, they seek for causal 
relations and generalized views. To occupy the mind with 
these is the function of the University rather than the secondary 
school ; but in the last year of secondary school work prepara- 
tion may be made for the highest work. So strong is the 
intellectual impulse at this period towards the abstract, the 
causal and the general, that the boys will do the work for 
themselves badly, if a competent teacher does not afford 
guidance. Assuredly this is the truth, that a University that 
does not meet this want of the maturing mind is nothing but 
an upper secondary school. 

Citizenship. — But this is not all : In the secondary stage, 
and to some extent even in the primary stage, history must 
be made to teach citizenship, and as much of the Constitution 
as may be thought necessary to the equipment of a citizen 
politician. Surely this is important in a democratic country. 

Social and civil relations and the forms of our constitutional 
polity, including local or municipal organization, should be 
taught in all secondary schools ; but only of course in their 
general outlines. We are not educating boys to be con- 
stitutional lawyers any more than we are educating them to be 
experts in any other department of knowledge. It is for the 
Universities to see to the experts of a nation. The duty of 
subjects to the State ought to be impressed. But it is quite 
useless to do this in a formal and text-book way. All that can 
be taught with effect must arise out of the history teaching from 
day to day, and be in close relation to it, and given orally. 
Such teachings, if incidental and associated with persons and 
events, take effect; if formal and detached, they are wholly 
ineffectual for their purpose. Their great value consists not 



272 HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 

in the knowledge they give, but in their deepening the sense 
of national continuity and social unity, and so preparing the 
young for patriotic citizenship and for a humane understanding 
of their social relations. 

The amount of instruction aimed at should be studiously 
restricted in its range : text-books of " civics " should be 
religiously avoided. But quite at the end of the secondary 
period, the pupil may be encouraged to write narratives of 
certain constitutional changes and to draw his own conclusions. 
Professor Seeley goes so far as to say that history has to do 
only with the " State." This is too narrow a view ; although 
we may concede that the development of the State must be 
the central interest of the professed historian. By the "State," 
I presume, is meant the organization of the common life under 
law written or unwritten ; and the story of it is how this came 
about. Such instruction, in any full and true sense is evidently, 
like the philosophy of history, the prerogative of the University ; 
but in the later period of the secondary school, the pupils may 
be introduced to it in the form of familiar conversations on 
their historical reading in the way we have suggested. 

For the masses who do not go to secondary schools, instruc- 
tion in citizenship must be given in evening continuation schools; 
but not disjoined from general historical reading. If formal and 
technical, I repeat, it loses its effect. Even the adult mind, while 
it loves generalization, rests itself ultimately on the concrete. 
There is only one interest that is universal, and that is Life. 

When we contemplate the close relationship that exists 
between history, geography, literature, civil relations, and ethics, 
we see how one subject of study, properly taught, aids and 
confirms the acquisition of knowledge in other departments — 
indeed, cannot be taught according to sound method without 
doing so. All subjects admit of cross-references to each other, 
and it is by utilizing these that we weave that web of intellectual 
and moral association which gives unity to education and 



HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE SCHOOL 273 

measures the education of each of us. It has been often urged 
against educational reformers, and with some truth, that they 
desire to teach too much during the school period. But 
the moment we begin to get a glimpse of method and of the 
organization and inter-relation of studies, we see that much 
may be taught with ease and simplicity, if only the teacher 
himself be properly equipped and understand the scope and 
purpose of his vocation. We may seem to demand much of 
him ; but not more than the future will demand, if he is to be 
educator as well as instructor. 

In conclusion, as to the equipment of the teacher I would 
say, let no man pretend to teach history who is not competent, 
starts in uno pede, to give a vivid narrative of all world-history 
with a map of the world in front of him and a few coloured 
chalks. 

Note. As to examination papers in history, these should be 
confined in schools to dates and to the calling for the narrative 
reproduction of events. Although it is true that we have, in the 
secondary school, been gradually introducing the boy to reasoned 
history, he can absorb much more than he can give out. If you 
insist on his dealing with political causes, he will simply get by 
rote what he has read or been told. To get dates by heart is in 
accordance with sound psychology ; to get generalizations by heart 
is to flaunt the plainest teachings of psychology. Boys can under- 
stand reasonings and gather in this way materials for the future, 
but to expect them to reason for themselves is to foster premature 
judgment in immature minds. 



L. L. 18 



274 



XIV. 

AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE, AND 
THE DANGERS THAT ATTEND THE DISCI- 
PLINE OF GOOD MASTERS 1 . 

I do not propose in this address to speak of incompetent 
masters — of men, that is to say, who cannot maintain discipline 
without constant appeal to cane, birch or taws. Such men 
ought at once to leave the profession ; they are naturally 
disqualified for it. What sight more melancholy than to see 
a teacher with his book in his hand and the taws hanging 
under it, hooked over his little finger ! What an utter mis- 
apprehension of the whole aim of school-life does this indicate ! 
The driving, which is an inevitable result of the Code 2 , makes 
this necessary, we are told ; and so far we may admit the 
apology. The chief objection to the "individual pass and 
pay " system lies, indeed, in this, that it causes the teacher 
to drive ; and driving too often ends in physical coercion 
and pain. Even girls- are flogged, and the steady progress 
which Scotland was making in the recognition of the fact 
that moral power is the only truly educative force, has been 
put back for a whole generation by the Code. 

In this address I have in view only good masters, as 
you will see from its title — men who regard physical pain 

1 Delivered by request, at the Educational Congress at Edinburgh, 5th 
January, 1882. 

2 The Code in force in 1882. 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 275 

as a rare and final resort in discipline, and who honestly 
endeavour to make moral law supreme. I desire to consider, 
in a philosophical spirit, the dangers to which the two chief 
kinds of good masters are exposed, and to guard them against 
these dangers, which, I think, generally arise from their mis- 
interpretation of the word Authority. 

Let me start, then, with the proposition that all sound 
discipline of the young rests ultimately on authority as its basis, 
and that authority itself rests on reason. And further, that 
the ultimate object of school discipline, properly understood, 
is not to secure obedience to school rules and the doing of the 
ever-recurring lessons, but to create in the boy self-discipline. 
The end is an ethical end ; it has in view the gradual and slow 
formation of the character of the pupil, through the inculcation 
of motives and the strengthening of will by daily doing so that 
the boy may become a self-regulating man. These things being 
assumed, I would say further that the process of all disciplining 
of unformed minds by others consists largely in supplying, not 
so much direct, as collateral, motives to the weak, uncertain 
will, whereby it may be steadied and borne on to its purpose. 
This has to be done till habit has been formed ; and habit is a 
tendency automatically to repeat what has been often done. 
A boy or youth, for example, may have a clear perception of 
the right in conduct ; he may be intensely sensitive to the 
influence of those sentiments and emotions which urge him 
to do the right, but yet he may never do it save by accident, or 
under very favourable circumstances. The tendency of the 
natural man is like the steady pull of a physical force; it is 
like gravitation — always there, always certain — dragging the 
boy's will along without effort on his part, flumine secundo. It 
is the upward tendency we have to establish, and our work is 
then accomplished 1 . 

1 "Jam non consilio bonus, sed more eo perductus ut non tantum, recte 
facere, possim, sed nisi recte facere non possim." (I forget the reference; 
it is quoted by Wordsworth on his " Ode to Duty "). 



276 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

Now, the most potent of all the collateral aids to the 
unfashioned will of boyhood is the authority that resides in 
the parent or master, and is symbolized in their persons ; nay, 
it may be maintained that all true and genuine discipline 
whatsoever emanates from authority, and that disciplining of 
the young is simply authority in action according to time and 
circumstance. If we seek, then, for the source of all sound 
and healthy discipline of the pupil, we shall find it in the 
authority of the master. The master is at once the legislative 
and executive power. His right to legislate and to execute 
rests in the authority that is vested in him. 

Now, by what title does he lay claim to that authority at 
all? The State and the parent, it may be said, delegate to 
him their authority. True ; but in that very delegation there 
is something to be investigated. It is not necessary to inquire 
into the ultimate grounds of the authority exercised by the 
State in the name of civil order ; it suffices here to say that 
authority, in so far as it is not concerned merely with police, 
i.e. the driving and coercing of human beings into the obser- 
vance of law and order, but with the education of a human 
soul — the bringing about of that self-discipline to which I have 
referred above as the aim of the school, has no claim to the 
exercise of might, except in so far as might is based on right ; 
and, therefore, on reason. I will put my point in an extreme 
way for the purpose of bringing out my meaning : — A father 
has no right to exercise might in inflicting injustice on his 
child, simply because that child has the misfortune to be his 
offspring. Nay, may we not go further, and hold that a father 
has no right to exercise his might in imposing what is merely 
unreasonable on his boy — I mean what is in itself, and, 
apart from the boy's own opinion, unreasonable ? Children 
submit, doubtless, to such inflictions ; but why ? Because they 
are too ignorant to understand their rights, and too weak to 
assert them. The unjust and unreasonable parent takes 
advantage of this meanly. If these remarks be true of a 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 277 

parent, how much more, then, are they true of the master 
of a school? 

Authority, then, which is the foundation of all discipline, 
is not might or force, as masters from time immemorial have 
presumed, and as many still presume. It is might as based on 
right ; and, in dealing with moral and emotional beings, it must 
always be able to vindicate itself at the bar of right. Where, 
then, shall we look for the characteristics of authority which 
constitute it right in might? I think we shall find them by 
introspection, — by ascertaining the characteristics of that inner 
authority of the moral law, that supremacy and rightful might 
of conscience under which we all as spirits live and work. 
Now, I find that this inner law of conscience, which is my 
schoolmaster, which disciplines me to be always just, to be 
always right and reasonable, to be always the same, to be 
always loyal to the highest sentiments and aspirations of my 
nature, condemns only when a real offence has been committed; 
it recognizes pleas of mercy ; is not equally severe with all 
offences ; and finally I find that it exists in my consciousness 
invested with Divine Authority. Now, all good masters may 
be placed under one of two classes. (1) Those in whom 
these characteristics of the inner authority of conscience are 
conspicuous. They embody in their own character, actions, 
and manner, the moral law. They are ever exhibiting, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, the right of the might of authority. 
(2) Those who but dimly recognize the moral ground of the 
authority they exercise. They wield, and consequently embody, 
the pure might of authority. The former is the just man, and 
he alone truly educates ; the latter is the strong-willed man, 
who by the exhibition of law and might, with their background 
of physical force, coerces boys into the doing of certain things, 
and calls it discipline. 

The first type of master let us call "The Wise Master"; the 
second type let us call "the Captain-Master." As the great 
object of school is the education of a moral being, not the 



278 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

mere drilling of boys into conformity with certain external 
rules, it is only the just man who is the wise master, and who 
really understands the greatness and dignity of his position, 
and his power as an instrument in human progress. The 
strong-willed or captain-master may be likened to a head 
policeman or to the captain of a vessel on the high seas. The 
best of this type have many merits, which I am very far indeed 
from ignoring; but, at best, they do not look far enough 
forward. They are content with the immediate results of orders 
obeyed. The wise and just master, on the other hand, has for 
his motto, Respice finem. " What am I ultimately aiming at ? " 
is the question he asks himself. And the answer is, " The 
education of my boys as moral and spiritual beings." All else 
he will sacrifice to this grand aim. We cannot but accord a 
certain measure of respect to the captain-master, and we are 
glad to find him when perfect of his- kind ; but for the wise 
master we must have a feeling of veneration. I know no 
position more exalted than his : I know no man so admirable. 
Is there any professional worker in the world's work who is to 
be named with him in the same breath? 

Having briefly described the two kinds of masters, let us 
dwell for a little on the dangers and weaknesses to which 
these different types of men are exposed. For it is not to be 
presumed that we find either of them in perfection. What we 
may, and do, find is honest men striving to be one or the 
other, and some coming pretty near the goal they are striving 
to reach. 

I. — First, as to the wise master, the true educator, what are 
his dangers ? 

1. He is apt to lose sight of the might that resides in the 
right of authority. He is apt to forget that, while the foundation 
of his authority is a moral one, yet its effectiveness consists in 
the might which it exhibits. He is in a governing position : 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 279 

he is a ruler, a monarch. But he may be self-analytic, and 
so conscious of his own personal short-comings as to have 
a half misgiving as to the rightfulness of firmly asserting his 
own authority simply as such. In exercising a firm, though 
wisely moderate, authority, he may not himself always heartily 
believe in it. His own sins of omission and commission may 
be so many, his own failure to lead that perfect life of the wise 
man up to which he is educating his boys may be so clear to 
his own secret consciousness, that he half feels himself to be 
an impostor, and is sometimes disposed to smile at his own 
assumption of autocratic moral sovereignty. He cannot but 
be aware how much better in many respects is a fine boy 
than even a so-called 'good' man. The disturbances of his 
equanimity caused by petty everyday incidents, the irritability 
caused by work and anxiety, the sense of failure to dis- 
charge his responsibilities, the envies, the jealousies, the un- 
charitableness, the anger which the conflicts of the world 
engender, the little vanities which hang on the skirts of his 
robe of office -all these things, and many more, disturb his 
daily thoughts, and make him feel less than the least of those 
to whom he is to be a model, a guardian, and guide. He feels 
himself to be a sham, for he has to seem what he is not. If, 
under the influence of such self-analysis, he disrobes himself 
of the purple of command, he is undone. His estimate of 
himself and his position are both wrong. He forgets that 
there is no such thing as the wise man, the perfect character. 
He has misread the moral teachings of life. He forgets that 
the highest life of the saint is still a struggle, still a falling and 
rising again, and that the distinguishing mark of all the wisdom 
and goodness to which finite man can reach is the continual 
and continuous effort to be wise and good. He ought to re- 
member the failures of the past only in so far as they strengthen 
him for the present and the future. He must not, therefore, 
allow his self-knowledge of past failures and present imperfection 
to weaken his assumption of the authority — the might, of his 



280 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

position. It will always temper the exercise of that authority, 
but it ought not to detract from the exhibition of it. 

Is not this, however, to maintain relations with the young 
spirits around him which are not true and honest, and which 
therefore have in them the element of failure, as all untruth 
necessarily has ? Not so ; for, as his estimate of himself is 
wrong, so is his estimate of his position. He does not stand 
there, at the head of these youthful spirits, in his personal 
capacity alone. He is a representative of all that is wise 
and good, and in that representative and ministerial character 
he must maintain the dignity of his office. He holds Her 
Majesty's Commission, so to speak, and is there in the name 
of the State ; he is the minister of the thought and experience 
of mankind, and is there in the name of humanity ; he is the 
sum of the past, and is there in the cause of the future ; he is 
the representative to the young of the highest spiritual aims 
and hopes of mankind, and consequently is there in the name 
of the Most High. Let him think of these things, and whilst 
he will not thereby lessen his efforts to harmonize his own 
inner life with his high and sacred calling, he will yet maintain 
authority, by exhibiting the might and dignity which become 
his office. 

2. Again, the clear perception of the ultimate justification 
of his own authority — the moral justification of it, may lead 
him to bring that moral justification so much into the fore- 
ground as to weaken the expression of authority as law or 
might on the one side, and of obligation and obedience to 
authority, simply as such, on the other. He may resort to 
explanations, exhortations, appeals, and persuasions, instead 
of to command. Now, a master must always be able to 
vindicate, if necessary, every order and every authoritative act 
in the court of common sense and at the bar of justice, but he 
is not bound to make this always clear to his subjects. By 
explanation and persuasion he flatters one kind of boy, and 
so loses his respect ; he weakens another kind of boy, though 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 28 1 

retaining his affection — also, however, at the expense of his 
respect ; he wholly undermines the only motive which guides 
and sustains another, which is the sense of the power of lazv. 
With the boy of finest temper he does not lose much, for such 
a boy has already in a half-conscious way penetrated to the 
secrets of authority and shares the spirit of the master, but 
even with him he weakens his position. I am very far from 
saying that a master should not sometimes put himself 
in the position of a persuader and explainer. On the 
contrary, he must let all, especially the older boys, see from 
time to time the ethical reality of the school formalities, 
and lead them to understand the ethical significance of his 
authoritative acts and words. But he must not dwell on this : 
he must act his ideas rather than talk them. There are 
occasions, or, if there are none, they should be made, when 
the lesson of the day gives room for the sowing of moral seed 
by clear analysis of the motives of moral action, or the pointed 
application of a story, a poem, or historic deed. These 
opportunities should not only be taken, but sought and created. 
School life itself, too, will yield, in its ordinary incidents, 
abundance of material for enforcing the right and honourable 
in thought and action. In short, he must not rest his 
authority on explanation and persuasion, but only, as fit 
occasion arises, support it with these. A glance of the eye, 
a frown, a smile, a friendly pat, an encouraging word — these 
are the forms which his moral persuasions must take. In 
fact, a master who habitually tries to exhibit to his boys the 
ground of all his actions, and to persuade to the right, abdicates 
his authority as such. He does so with the best intentions, 
relying on the power of truth and goodness, forgetting that 
the power of these fails even with himself, how much more, 
then, with the immature mind, which cannot comprehend them 
in all their depth ! In truth, he calls on the weak and as yet 
unformed will to do what his own mature will does not always 
accomplish. But the worst is this, that he forgets that the 



282 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 






vacillating moral nature of boys gladly finds its support and 
strength in authority and law as embodied in him, and that if 
he substitute ideas and thoughts and sentiments in room of 
these, that support is withdrawn. 

I have already said that opportunities are numerous for 
pointing morals, stimulating to virtuous effort, inciting to the 
disdaining of sloth and the suppression of vicious propensities, 
and of holding up to the boys the standard at which they 
should aim. These fit occasions the master will gladly seize 
for bringing into clear daylight the undercurrent of moral 
and religious principle which guides his own conduct, and is 
presumed to animate the school life. The boys will thus 
not merely learn to act rightly, but will get some vision of 
the beauty and charm of goodness, and of the dignity of 
virtue. But with all this, a master must beware of wearing 
" his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at." All talk on 
his part has to be kept within severe limits, for it has no end 
save action, and boys must not be led to substitute the dreamy 
contemplation of the good for the doing of the right. In 
speaking to boys, moreover, he will avoid dwelling on the 
sentimental or emotional side of goodness where they them- 
selves are concerned : they very rarely understand this. Senti- 
ment, like humour, comes late, save in exceptional cases. It is 
the manliness, the heroism, the justice, the wisdom, the nobility 
of goodness and virtue, which can reach the hearts of boys ; 
and the lowness, the meanness, the unwisdom, the injustice, 
the weakness, the unworthiness of vice. 

3. In the third place, a weakness which besets the wise 
master is a certain disregard for his own rules and for his own 
school order. He feels so deeply his own strength in ideas, 
he is so confident of the justness of his own sentiments, he is 
so sure of the truth of his own emotions, he is so strong in his 
spiritual strength, that he is prepared to suspend, set aside, or 
override the rules of the school, under the persuasion that his 
moral resources are so great that he can, when he chooses, 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 283 

restore things to their proper balance. The temptation to do 
this is great; but it is so detrimental to that settled order which 
contributes so largely to the promotion of good habits in the 
young, that a master must be on his guard against the weakness. 
"That will do for to-day," "Never mind, it is of little conse- 
quence," said in impatience, trusting to the power of recovering 
lost ground, is a blunder. Even the wise master, then, has 
to be watchful over himself with respect to those vices of 
management which lean to virtue's side. I speak, of course, 
of a school ; for it may constantly occur in the well-understood 
relations of a tutor and a single pupil, or of a father and child, 
that freedom may be taken with rules which both understand. 
So also, and for the same reasons, such conduct would not 
affect the boy of finest temper ; but a master has to deal 
with various characters, and with these also in various moods, 
which it is impossible for him to estimate. In dealing with 
particular faults, too, he is apt to be lenient, where he is 
himself well assured that the act of the pupil was well meant, 
or that the impulse that prompted him had a mixture of good 
in it. Such treatment of the individual case may be quite 
safe, so far as the individual is concerned, but its effect on the 
school, as a whole, is hurtful. It weakens the sense of order 
and just administration. Morally there may be no fault to find 
with the treatment of a particular case, in so far as the relations 
of master and pupil are concerned ; but in a school there is 
such a thing as the universal, as well as the particular, conscience 
which has to be considered, and which must be, in all doubtful 
cases, paramount. The master's personal feeling about the 
particular case, accordingly, ought not to govern ; if it does, 
law is weakened thereby, for the majority of boys can ascribe 
the course pursued to the arbitrary will of the master alone, 
and cannot be expected to discriminate and note those finer 
characteristics of an act or incident which justify exceptional 
treatment. 

It is not merely weak men who break down in the 



284 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

administration of a school system ; nor is it their case that we 
now are specially considering, but that of the strong man — 
the man so strong in his own moral convictions and spiritual 
resources, that he is disposed to treat as of little importance 
the rules and methods which he has himself in the wisest 
moments imposed. Such a course of conduct has, more- 
over, its plausible justification, for it is not desirable to 
have a hard and fast line of pedantic military rule. There 
should be some elasticity — some elbow-room — in the school 
system, just as in the moral code and habits that govern the 
individual conscience. In this feeling that the organized life 
of a school should not be wooden and inelastic, there is a 
sound principle. But this does not justify fitful and capricious 
administration ; this freedom and elasticity should itself be a 
visible part of the system. 

It is essential to good school-keeping, that the boys should 
feel that there is a living and human moral force at their 
head — not an iron mechanism, not a Fate; that they are 
not parts of a machine merely, of which the head-master is 
only a kind of stoker or driver. A human heart must be 
felt to be beating everywhere under the outer case of rules 
and methods — a heart which sympathizes and understands. 
There must be room left for this heart to beat freely, and this 
can be secured only by having as few rules as possible. Given 
a limited number of general rules for the guidance of the day, 
and all else should flow from the inspiration of the hour. 
The moral life of the school should start fresh every morning^ 
How else can there be that free movement which is essential 
to the growth of heart and intellect? With the wise master 
there can be little or no difficulty in bringing about this kind 
of life. He proceeds on the assumption that all are aiming 
with him to realize a high standard, and if he has acquired the 
confidence of his boys, no word, or act, or gesture of his will 
be set down to caprice : these things will be too visibly obedience 
in himself to the best and highest. The boys will recognize 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 285 

this. The larger the school, of course, the more numerous must 
be the rules; the more strictness of administration there is, and 
the more of system, the influence of the central and govern- 
ing mind is less directly felt. This is the evil attending large 
schools, and which weakens their influence as moral seminaries. 
Recognize this : Day by day the master is presumed to give 
forth the moral power which is to permeate the mass. There 
is moral freedom on both sides. If under the influence of this 
free spirit the boys should err, they would, I believe, candidly 
admit to their master that they had done so ; the relations 
between the two are frank, for are they not both working 
together to realize the same community of life? So much 
for the freedom and elasticity which belong to the master 
and the school, as resting on moral sympathy and livingness, 
as opposed to mere system, and law, and formalism. Nay, in 
authority itself there is also to be found an element of elasticity, 
for it has to regulate much that is in itself neither moral nor 
immoral, and in this field it has a Papal power of dispensation, 
which it can occasionally exercise without damage to itself: 
it can sometimes deliberately suspend a rule or injunction, 
and by that very act strengthen itself as pure authority. 

4. Such are some of the errors against which even the 
wise master has to guard. There are others not worthy of 
mention. But it may be well to point out that, as the master 
we are describing has a moral affection for his boys, which 
becomes in many cases a personal affection, he is disposed 
to become too familiar and friendly. Now, pleasing as it is 
to be on such relations with well-disposed boys, there are 
dangers attending it. The principle of authority, I again 
repeat, is the central principle in the relations between a 
teacher and his pupils, and must not be tampered with. The 
wise master, however, is not likely to err so far on this virtuous 
side as seriously to impair the discipline of his school. A 
vigorous, earnest mind can occasionally take great liberties 
without serious hurt to any, and with possible advantage to a 



286 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

few of the more timid and shy natures. But such familiarities 
are to be avoided ; for they are apt to engender in the boyish 
mind, which we must remember is as yet untrained, in- 
experienced, undisciplined, immature, and undiscriminating 
(defects which only time can cure), a sense of equality that 
does not, cannot, ought not, to exist. The master is so 
vigorous, so earnest, and so good withal, that there will be 
no attempt to evade or counteract him, because of his familiar 
kindnesses, and the discipline will not be seriously, if at all, 
affected ; but the too great equality will deprive the higher 
natures of the idea of some standard to attain, and will give 
to all false notions of their relation to mature minds and to 
authority generally. This, when we consider the tendency of 
youth to self-assertion and to practising the art of instructing 
their grandfathers, is not a desirable result ; especially in these 
times. 

II. — If dangers attend the administration of the wise 
master, they are of the nature, as I have indicated, of 
weaknesses that lean to virtue's side, and arise out of too 
amiable a view of human and boy-nature, and too mild a sense 
of personal dignity — in brief, in a deficiency of pure authority 
simply as such. 

On the other hand, the captain-master — who relies solely 
on authority in the sense of law and might, who distrusts all 
purely moral motives, who has little faith in the nature of boys, 
and does not believe that they are capable of receiving ideas 
of life and action, and relies, therefore, on the maintenance 
of law as law, and on the preservation of a rigid system — is 
exposed to dangers much more serious. His duty is (or if this 
be not his duty, what is ?) to train the boy to an independent 
perception of the truth of moral ideas, of the majesty of the 
law which resides in them, and to the habit of self-regulation. 
And yet he abdicates his function altogether when he treats 
boys simply as parts of a machine ; he distrusts the good in 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 287 

them, and all the possibilities of virtue and religion as inner 
growths. 

This man, who rests not merely his claim to rule, but his 
right to rule and his method of ruling, on authority purely 
as such, without regard to the ultimate moral basis of all 
authority whatsoever, who therefore never lets the light of 
moral ideas shine through the sable mantle of magistracy, 
must ever fail to attain to all the highest aims of the school ; 
and this, because he does not consciously propose to himself 
any such aims. In truth, it will be found he does not even 
propose to himself any such aims as the consummation of his 
own personal life. He has no hesitations, no self-questionings. 
His life is like his school, grounded on authority — the authority 
of Church and State, or of social opinion and convention. He 
is not a living free soul, he has not attained to the liberty 
of the Spirit. For be it always remembered that as is the 
man, so is the master ; and in describing the wise master, 
we are only describing the wise man, whose powers have been 
set in the particular direction of educating others, just as 
Quintilian, in describing the good orator, defines him to be 
bonus vir peritus dicendi. He has to find a moral method, 
but it is educed from his own character. 

I know it will here be said by some, " Leave things alone, 
then ; if all depends on the man and the character, he will 
be a good or a bad master, spite of you and all your 
criticisms." This is a great error. For, in the first place, 
a master, who is already a wise man, has, when entering on 
his great and delicate task, to be encouraged to have faith 
in the moral method which would naturally suggest itself to 
his nature, and, on the other hand, to be guarded against the 
tendency in that method to run to seed. By reflecting on 
other characters and methods in the course of his studies, 
moreover, he brings out with distinctness to himself his own, 
and thereby understands what he is doing. In the second 
place, it is a superficial view of human nature which classes all 



288 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

as either good or bad, or in any way that involves a visible and 
deep line of demarcation. Human nature is a complex thing, 
and at best we can classify men and masters according to their 
leading tendencies only. Our duty is accordingly to counteract 
the evil, and strengthen the good ; to oppose and to hold up 
to aversion the former, and to eliminate what is weak and 
questionable from the latter. By thus clearing up the con- 
ceptions which the young educational aspirant has as to his 
future work, we confirm the weak and put the strong on their 
guard, lest they in their strength should fail and fall. Prepara- 
tion for the work of tuition is thus the preparation of the man 
himself for life. The aspirant to the teacher's office must 
himself become the wise man, in order that he may be able 
to become the wise master. The training-school for teachers, 
whether in the Universities or out of it, must, in fact, be 
itself a school for men, in order that it may be a school for 
schoolmasters. 

To return : the captain-master, who relies on authority 
in its aspect of law and might alone, fails, and must fail, for 
want of faith in boy nature, to attain the highest ends of 
school life, which are, as I have said, ethical, always ethical. 
At the same time, he does not wholly fail ; for obedience 
to law as law is a great virtue, and if the master is perfect 
of his kind, and holds himself bound within his own rules, 
and does not overstrain the personal and arbitrary element 
in authority, the school is orderly, the boys acquire certain 
good habits, and they pass from the period of tutelage with 
a sense of the supremacy of rightful authority, which is a great 
gain. But the dangers to which such a master is exposed are 
many : — ■ 

i. Such a man is very apt to overstrain his authority, and, 
forgetting that he is working a system, he substitutes for system 
his own arbitrary will. It is very difficult to resist this tendency. 
Love of power is a great snare. This captain-master identifies, 
ere long, the authority which to him is, in truth, only delegated, 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 289 

and of which he is only the representative and symbol, with 
his own abstract will : authority passes into arbitrariness, and 
the school quickly feels this. Now, I would ask — Why should 
boys, who, after all, are little men, submit to this ? Nay even 
where the authority, though stern, has not yet passed into 
arbitrariness, why should a boy submit? There is no answer 
to this save one — that he is afraid to disobey. Why afraid? 
If he disobeyed, what would happen ? The disapprobation of 
his master, you will say. But, mark, it is only the boy who 
has already a strong natural tendency to submission and 
respect who is open to this motive. The weak, approbation- 
loving boy, again, is sensitive and timid, and he also submits. 
The self-sufficing boy may, or may not, obey, according to 
his appreciation of the ultima ratio regum. The loyal boy 
of fine nature may obey, and probably will, not through 
fear of his master, but because he has in himself and his 
own perceptions of right, a motive for obedience. But note 
this, and it is to this I am pointing — the true spiritual life 
of all these is never reached by the master, and, accordingly, 
he cannot possibly educate. He is in truth driving, not drawing; 
and this comes out very clearly if we consider what his ultima 
ratio is. It is physical pain. It does not matter whether it be 
an imposition, detention in school, deprivation of certain boyish 
pleasures, or actual flogging — in all alike, physical dis-ease is 
the essential character of the punishment. A teacher, in 
answering a question on methods, when asked, " What steps 
he would take to make an idle or disobedient boy work ? " 
wrote — " Tell him to do it, and if he didn't, lick him ! " This 
is the whole book of discipline with certain masters, summed 
up in a sentence. If he did not do it after he was licked, 
I suppose the next step would be to lick him again and 
harder, and so on, ad infinitum. I do not mean to say 
that the process would not succeed with many boys, but, 
at most, only in securing outward conformity. It never did, 
and never can educate, because it does not touch the inner 
l. l. 1 g 



290 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

springs. It is the method whereby slaves are made to toe 
the line, and bears are taught to dance. And yet it is, in 
truth, the supreme motive power which lies at the basis of 
the administration of the arbitrary captain-master. If now 
the purely authoritative method, even when well administered 
as a system, has this weakness, that it fails to educate 
in the true sense, how much is the evil aggravated if the 
master yields to the tendency, which there must always be, 
to substitute his arbitrary will for the idea of true authority 
(might as founded on right), and of which he ought to be 
only a passionless symbol, and perhaps persuades himself 
that he is. 

2. The next weakness in the captain-master is the identi- 
fying of his authority with his own personality. Offences are 
then no longer offences against the law and system which he 
represents, but against himself personally. Here passion at 
once enters ; and, with passion, uncertainty and irregularity 
of action, and consequent injustice. Authority passes first 
into arbitrary law and then into the mere caprice of despotism. 
The wise master can afford to exhibit his human emotions 
of anger and indignation and contempt, so long as he main- 
tains self-control ; the captain-master will find these dangerous 
tools to play with. They raise the former in the estimation 
of the boys ; they lower the latter to an equality with them. 
Mere authority, as law and might and system, has no right 
to passions. Wisdom, on the other hand, may be angry and 
sin not. 

3. The third danger to which the captain-master is subject 
is over-severity in punishment. This danger arises when he 
has already yielded to the temptation to confound his own 
personality with the authority which he wields only as a dele- 
gate of the moral law. His only means of enforcing discipline 
being the production of physical pain, there are no limits to 
the inflictions he may impose, if his personal passions are once 
aroused. He can become even vindictive. 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 29I 

4. The fourth danger may be found where there is perfect 
coolness and self-control ; it consists in the captain-master 
becoming the slave of his own rules, mistaking rules for 
morality, and so confounding all ethical distinctions. This 
is a common weakness of women when placed in a position of 
command. All offences become alike heinous, because all are 
breaches of some rule. It is by this rule that offences are 
measured. Authority is thus transmuted into pedantry. 

I might now go on to describe other kinds of masters, but 
the two classes with which I have been dealing are the chief 
classes, of which all others are modifications. The weaknesses, 
which beset each of these two classes constitute fresh sub-types 
when they become permanent. Under the first class, for 
example, falls the sub-type or variety — the sympathetic master, 
he who merges all authority in sympathy ; and this, carried 
beyond certain limits, gives the anarchical master, who is no 
master at all. Under the second head, again, we have the 
tyrant master (like Ur Keate of Eton), who makes a moral 
desert and calls it peace ; the pedantic master ; and the drill- 
sergeant master or martinet, with all of whom external order 
is the highest and sole result, as it is, indeed, the sole aim. It 
is enough, however, to indicate these distinctions. 

Let us consider now for a little the effect on boys of the 
defects of different kinds of masters. 

To carry out in detail the parallel of the effect which each 
kind of master has upon different kinds of boys, would be a 
long, though by no , means a tedious or unprofitable work. 
Many and subtle are the influences which mould character. 
Nor are these exercises in analytic psychology unworthy of the 
attention of schoolmasters. They convert the life of the mere 
teacher into the life of the educator and the student of practical 
psychology. They deepen, at the same time that they broaden, 
his conceptions of his task, and invest a subject, otherwise 
barren, and even to some minds repellent, with the perennial 



292 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

charm of philosophy. They throw the light of the highest 
reason, and the warmth of the life of humanity, on the teacher's 
daily work, which is thus no longer task-work, but, spite of 
all its drawbacks, the pleasantest as well as the noblest occu- 
pation in which a man in these days can be engaged. 

Omitting much, then, I would merely at present point out 
the danger that attends the proper spiritual growth of boys 
under that species of the wise master who, through the in- 
fluence of his sympathetic nature, has a disposition to place 
too great a reliance on the emotions and moral sentiments of 
his charge. By so doing, as I have said, he obscures the idea 
of authority, and to that extent weakens his own power, and 
softens the moral fibre of his pupil. The purely sympathetic 
master tends to enfeeble all those boys who live by authority, 
and are supported by it ; and all, more or less, are dependent 
on authority. They have their natures disturbed ; an inner 
anarchy begins to set itself up in their minds; their mainstay — 
law — is gone, and emotions, sentiments, ideas, on which the 
sympathetic master relies, are no substitutes for them. Even 
the boy of finest breed is injured ; for he, as well as the boy 
who depends on praise, is in special need of the discipline 
which the recognition of mere authority as such gives. When 
that is relaxed, he is left to himself, and may become moody 
and isolated ; or, if there be too much moralizing and sympa- 
thetic appeal on the part of the master, his loyal nature, in 
the attempt to rise to the moral call made on him, strains 
itself, and becomes mature before its time; and thus while a 
boy is yet in his teens, you have the most disagreeable of all 
spectacles, which is described by Goethe as a mature judgment 
in an unripe mind. Where there is, at the same time, a 
tendency, to self-sufficingness in the mind of the boy, you have 
a still more offensive exhibition of the same mental state, 
accompanied by what is called priggishness. 

Now, without entering here on that interesting subject — the 
moral analysis of a prig — I would merely say that every other 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 293 

kind of boy has the possible making of a man in him ; but the 
prig has to be unmade and taken to pieces, as it were, and 
made up afresh, before he can be an example of a man. He 
is narrow and arid, and the human outcome is not pleasing. 
He is the true moral Philistine. 

What now is the mental attitude of the different kinds of 
boys to the captain-master, who falls into the sin which most 
besets him — arbitrariness and its concomitant severity ? He 
rules by fear and pain alone. The self-sufficing boy is quick 
enough to see the necessity of walking warily, and will probably 
escape penalties ; but in what respect is his moral nature 
affected? Is it not the case that the exhibition of this arbi- 
trariness and severity strengthens in him his own vice of 
character? Here before him is the man whom his parents, 
supported by the action of many other parents, have selected 
as the guide of his youth, the model of his future manhood. 
The master has his turn now, but in a few years the pupil's 
turn will come ; and, meanwhile, the little monster repeats 
among younger boys in the playground and dormitory the 
lesson which the master himself has already taught. 

That other boy, again, who is dependent on affection, sym- 
pathy, and praise, leads, in such circumstances, a wretched life ; 
for when not bullied by his master, he is bullied by the bigger 
boys, who expend on him the latent irritation which the system 
of the school engenders. 

That third boy, again, whose sense of submission to autho- 
rity is the guiding principle, suffers least in personal comfort ; 
but he tends to become a slave and a sneak, and we all know 
what a slave is when he is turned inside out — in other words, 
when the emancipated boy becomes a man. 

The loyal boy, the boy of finest breed, if he is by nature 
strong, adapts himself, as best he may, to the system under 
which he lives, perceiving in his master, in a half-conscious 
way (for it does not take the form of speech), all that he him- 



294 AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 

self ought not to be. Thereby he is negatively educated. If, 
however, his inner strength be not great, either because of his 
tender years or native want of fibre, even he is taught to skulk, 
evade, and hate. He is at war, in brief, with his master, and 
his very moral salvation lies in those rebellious feelings which 
he rightly cherishes against his governor. 

Meanwhile, where this arbitrary ruler governs, the whole 
school is, as a matter of fact, divided into hostile camps — the 
governor on one side, and the subjects on the other. To 
deceive a master, to evade him, nay, even to lie to him, to 
show up forged exercises, to call him names when he is not 
present, to take it out of him in any way which may suggest 
itself to the ingenious and irreverent minds of boys, are all 
recognized as part of the school institution, on the principle 
that all is fair in love and war. And can we rightly blame the 
boys ? Ought we not rather to see in this passive rebellion — 
or, if active, active only in separate acts, not in combined 
resistance — the hope of the salvation of the boys ? The youths 
of a high-spirited nation, like the British, will not, nay, ought 
not, to submit to arbitrary despotism based on physical coer- 
cion. They must find some outlet for their protest, and so 
long as they do not tell lies — simply keep clear of lies — I for 
one applaud them. The whole system proceeds on the as- 
sumption that there are two codes — a masters' code and a 
boys' code — of school morality; nay, the more sagacious of 
the masters, who accept the arbitrary system as the only one 
they feel their capacity to work, deliberately wink hard at 
breaches of school order. Nay, they must wink hard ; and I 
need not refer you to your Latin to let you know the connec- 
tion between the mild physical act of winking and the moral 
offence of conniving. There should, it seems to me, be only 
one code, one faith, one school. 

That the history of school-keeping is not enriched (I say 
deliberately, enriched) with a greater number of cases of open 
rebellion is explained by the fact that boys are ignorant and 



AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE 295 

do not know how far their mere feelings and emotions are 
justified as opposed to the tyranny above them, partly to the 
want of power of combination in the young. The practical 
deduction from what I have just been saying is, that boys are 
not always wrong, and masters are not always right. 

It may appear that in all I have said I have had in view 
the master of an English public school, where the head is not 
only teacher but rector and parent — the prophet, priest, and 
king of a community. So far this is true ; but the difference 
between the head-master of such a school and the master of a 
day school is not in the ends at which they should respectively 
aim, the spirit in which they should work, or the methods 
which they should pursue. Nor are the remarks that have 
been made less, applicable to a parent, with this difference 
only, that he may lean much more to the sympathetic and the 
tender than becomes the wise master, because he is the con- 
stant source of all the happiness as well as the unhappiness of 
the family, and has thus a control of the child's emotions and 
will which it is impossible for the master of many to have. 
His opportunities, too, of individualizing and of allowing for 
idiosyncrasies of character are great, and this a master of many 
can only very partially do. 

In conclusion, I would say to the master of a day school 
or of a class, who doubts the reality of his moral power over 
those whom he governs for a portion only of every day, " Do 
not underrate your influence. It is radiating from you on 
every side, and is simply incalculable in its possible effects. 
Work on the side of the ethical forces in the spirit of the wise 
master, and they will declare for you and help you when and 
where you least expect. Nothing is lost, least of all true moral 
power." 



CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. & C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



WORKS by Prof. S. S. LAURIE. 

The Educational Life and Writings of 
John Amos Comenius. 5th ed. 

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 






Primary Instruction in relation to Education. 6th ed. 

Language and Linguistic Method in the School. 

3rd ed. 

Institutes of Education. 2nd ed. 

OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH. 



Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta. 2nd ed. 
Ethica, or the Ethics of Reason. 2nd ed. 

WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, LONDON. 



Historial Survey of pre-Christian Education. 2nd ed. 

LONGMAN AND CO. LONDON. 



Mediaeval Education and the Rise and Constitution 
of the Universities. Second ed., in preparation. 






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